Select the whole range, or even the whole row(s) or column(s) where you want
this conditional formatting, then do Format/Conditional Formatting.

In the upper let corner of the dialog box, change "Cell Value Is" to
"Formula Is". Now it expects a formula which evaluates to TRUE or FALSE
(although non-zero and zero will do). Any cell references in the formula are
subject to absolute and relative addressing, so if you chose all of Column A,
the formula should be:

=FIND("xyz",A1) 0

Then, if you select cell A2 and do Format/Conditional Formatting, you'll find:

=FIND("xyz",A2) 0

and so on for A3, A4, etc.
--

--Andy Smith



"KarenH" wrote:


Is it possible to implement conditional formatting based on text contained
in a cell? Example, user wants to be able to highlight all the cells in a
spreadsheet for a given entity (which will change all the time) so I'm
looking for something like "cell contains xyz" -- but as far as I can tell,
it works only with numeric values.

Am I trying to do something that is impossible?

Thanks in advance.