Take a look at http://www.xldynamic.com/source/xld.CFConditions.html

--

HTH

Bob Phillips

(remove nothere from the email address if mailing direct)

"Jonathan Cooper" wrote in
message ...
All right, I had some time on my hands on a recent business trip, and I
stumbled accross this numeric puzzle called a Sudoku. I found it in the
USA
Today. It was the first time I had seen it, but it's probably well known
to
everyone else.

So, I started working the puzzle, and decided that Excel could do most of
the work for me. So I created some fairly complicated formulas
(combinations
of nested IF's and OFFSETS) to do the process of elimination for me. The
formulas work great. Then I use conditional formatting to highlight the
cells that have been eliminated. Again, works great.

Now the part I'm stumpped on.

I used conditional formatting, to hightlight the numbers that could be
eliminated (i.e., deleted). So, as you solve one square, conditional
formatting then highlights everwhere else in the puzzle that can not be
that
number. I happend to pick the color lavender. However, it becomes very
tedious to go cell by cell and delete the cells that are lavender.

What I would like to do is, run a macro that looks at the result of the
conditional formatting, and selects all the cells that are lavender.

Note: The formula I used in the conditional formatting changes from cell
to
cell. So using the advanced features of FIND, do not work correctly. Not
to
mention that the exterior cells have borders, while the interrior cells do
not.

Ideas?