You could use a MATCH function for this in a helper column of Sheet2,
along the lines of:

=IF(ISNA(MATCH(A2,Sheet1!A$2:A$1000,0)),"missing", "present")

then copy this down, or, indeed, use your CF formula in a helper
column in a similar way. Then you could fix the values, so there is no
overhead from recalculation. You could also apply filters to select
the missing items etc.

Hope this helps.

Pete

On Oct 5, 7:08 pm, Jules wrote:
Greetings!

I have two worksheets, one is an old database and the other a newer updated
version of the old.

So far, I have named the range in the old and have applied conditional
formating to the new using a countif(myrange,a2)=0 to highlight the
differences. The conditional formating is making the spreadsheet difficult
to work with, its very sluggish...one question is: Can I copy and past the
new formating without losing the marked differences or do I need to keep the
conditional formating? another question would be - - - - - IS THERE A BETTER
WAY?
THANKS SO MUCH--
Jules