I think you are getting ahead of yourself with that but if that actually
is your problem:

You may not use references to other worksheets or Workbooks
for Conditional Formatting criteria. This is not much of an obstacle,
simply use a named range to refer to a range on another worksheet.
The restriction also means that you cannot use a formula referencing
your personal.xls in a user defined function. You can get around that
by creating a reference in your VBE from your workbook to
your personal.xls

You did not indicate anything that was not on the worksheet in your
question, and John answered accordingly.

The cells that are selected when you enter the Conditional
Formatting are the cells that are subject to conditional
formatting. You could make your range B:J in the
example that John gave then you would not have to update
but keep in mind that your formula is relative to the active
cell in the range.

see http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/condfmt.htm

if still not clear you might look at Mike Alexander's site
for a video http://www.datapigtechnologies.com/ExcelMain.htm
--

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HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

wrote in message ups.com...
It says "you cannot use a direct reference to a worksheet range in a
conditional formula".