In the conditional formatting dialog, choose Formula Is instead of Value is,
then type in this formula as shown, changing the F16 to the cell address you
are setting conditional formatting for.
=OFFSET(F16,0,-1)="X"

In this case, when E16 contains x or X, then the conditional formatting will
change F16. You can fill this left/right/up/down as needed - but will result
in an error if you fill all the way into column A, since there is no column
to the left of column A.

Hope it helps you out.

"vic" wrote:

I need to format a cell (change it to red) when the cell adjacent to it
contains the character "x". I did try to look at tthe conditional formating
but colud not find a specific formula to do this, can anyone help me