Just set the background fills (colors) for the cells the way you need it and
leave the formula as is.

Cheers,
Joerg Mochikun

"Loadmaster" wrote in message
...
Joerg, that worked with one color but I would prefer to alternate between
blue and green each month.

"Joerg Mochikun" wrote:

I assume that the OP wants first and last days of the month included:
If cells C2:C13 are filled with "Jan"...Dec", then

1) Select range C2:C13
2) From menu select Format = Conditional Formatting
3) For Condition1 select 'Formula is'
4) Type formula
=C2=CHOOSE(MONTH(NOW())-1,"Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","Jul","Aug", "Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec")
4) Set a colors for this condition
5) Press 'OK'

Now the month before the present month should appear with the selected
color.

Cheers,

Joerg Mochikun





"Gord Dibben" <gorddibbATshawDOTca wrote in message
...
You say between Jan 1 and Jan 31

What do you want if the date is Jan 1 or Jan 31?


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:31:00 -0700, Loadmaster
wrote:

Cells C2:C13 has JAN - DEC. If todays month is between the 1 - 31 of
Jan I
require the previous month "DEC" conditionally formatted with a color
that
I
specify from the color pallet. If todays month is between the 1-28 or
29th
of
Feb I require the previous cell month "JAN" also conditionally color
formatted. As conditional formatting only allows you to set a maximum
of
three conditions, how do I format all the months in C2:C13 the same
way?