In xl2007, you get lots and lots of rules for conditional formatting.

You could make your first rule:
cell value is =""
and stop if true
And make it the format you like.

Or you could modify the formula so that it makes sure that the cell is nonblank.

Say you want to shade A1 if B1 contains a value 12--but only if A1 has
something in it.

You could use:
formula is:
=AND(B112,A1<"")

===
You may get a better response if you share the formula/rule that you're using.

mgccoop wrote:

I'm setting up a new report for the month of July and creating formatting
rules for data that will be entered throughout the month. However, when I
apply my rules to cells that have not yet got data entered (eg. for next
week) it is showing up as "formatted" even though the cell is empty. Is
there an override for this conditional formatting so that it the formatting
won't show up until I enter something in that cell? I'm new to Excel 2007.
Thanks,

--

Dave Peterson