Thanks for the replies Bob & Ed,

That first reply from you Bob nearly blew my mind...where on earth does that
lot go?

Conditional formatting sounds like it might be easier - if I were to reduce
the number of colours needed from 5 down to 3 or even 2 how would
conditional formatting work?

An example or two would be nice - please excuse my ignorance and bear with
me - I am a complete idiot when it comes to Excel (and many other things
besides! :-)

Thanks & regards,
-=pp=