Brilliant! i knew it would be something simple.
Thank you very much for your help.

"akphidelt" wrote:

Just take the $ out before the 1... so it looks like

=$A1="Pending"

The $ signs make an absolute reference to that one cell. So $A$1 is
referring to A1 every time.

"Tendresse" wrote:

I need some help with conditional formatting please.
I want cells in column B to automatically turn red when the value of the
adjacent cell in column A is equal 'Pending'.
It seems to be working fine when i select cells in column B one by one and
put the following condition:
Formula is: =$A$1="Pending"

But this work only for cell B1. I want to be able to select the entire
column B and do the conditfional formatting once. I also want this
conditional formatting to be applicable when i insert a new row. I tried to
use a generic formula to go with any row number (eg Formula is:
=A:A="Pending") but it didn't work.

What am i doing wrong?
I'm using Excel 2003
Please let me know if you need me to explain the problem more clearly.
Many thanks
Tendresse