Thanks for the response! I'm thinking the '$' in front of the A is the issue.
Isn't that what makes it 'absolute'? But I'll give you an example:

Cells F5,6,7, and 8 are the ACTUAL Last Yr. #'s (there are 4 categories -
Corp. sales, Mail Order, Gov't, and Education).
In the "Actual THIS YR #'s is where I want the conditions that if the number
is greater than last year (the F cells), it should be green, and less than
last year, red. so the formula reads as follows: "cell value is greater than
=$F$5" and "cell value is less than =$F$5" -- that's for the Corp. sales line.

The problem is when I use the format painter, it's still referencing $F$5
instead of 6, 7, or 8 for the other categories.

Do you know what I mean?? Even being able to do a "block" of numbers at a
time would drop my conditional formatting task down to 30 blocks from the
current 120 (having to format each cell separate).

Thanks again..
Maggie

"bpeltzer" wrote:

You should be able to create the CF once then use the format painter. It's
hard to be specific without knowing more details of your spreadsheet's
layout, but the key will be setting up the CF with a formula using a relative
(or mixed) reference (eg A4 or A$4 rather than $A$4).
If you'd like more specifics, please post with the condition you've got
specified currently, and some details of the layout.
--Bruce

"Maggie Boby" wrote:

I have a sales goal tracking spreadsheet that represents one period (month)
at a time. I have Sun - Sat across the top, then the categories (retail,
Corp, mail order, etc on the side.
For each day of the week, I have the Last Year's ACTUAL sales, the GOAL
number (usually 150% of LY), then THIS YEAR'S ACTUAL sales number. Obviously,
this is repeated three more times (going down the spreadsheet for each week).
I have used the conditional formatting to tell the TY Actual number to be
red or green based on if we exceed LY actual or not for each category. No
problem there. The problem is when I tried to use Format Painter so that I
didn't have to do every TY Actual cell, it keeps the reference cell instead
of understanding it needs the corresponding LY Actual cell that is two
columns over from it.

Is there a quick way to format the TY Actual cells?

Thanks in advance for you help!

Maggie