I think what you will need to do is to apply conditional formatting
manually to both cells, using the first cell status as the criteria
for both. Then you can use the Format Painter to copy this CF to other
pairs of cells.

Hope this helps.

Pete

On Feb 16, 9:55*am, Parish Pete
wrote:
I have a spreadsheet which is laid out as a burial ground map showing who is
buried where and whether a headstone is in place.

2 cells represent one grave as there may be 2 people buried there.
it's first 4 columns as a master list of grave numbers and against each
grave number is put 'M' for memorial if there is one, and the fore and
surname of the deceased. *there are two lines per grave.

Each grave on the map (pair of cells) calls the info from the master list
and displays it on the map with the appropriate format.

The format has 4 conditions and does not have to differentiate between 1 or
2 people in a grave:

Empty (diagonal black lines)
used (no format is applied)
used+memorial (cyan fill)
reserved. (horizontal red lines)

The sheet has 10 columns of around 20 pairs of cells.

Conditional format over the whole range works fine when the pair of cells
for a grave are marked empty or where both cells are used (for 2 people in a
grave).

My problem is finding an easy way to conditionally format the second cell of
each pair to match the first when the grave has only one occupant.

Presently where only one person is buried (shown in the first cell) the
second cell formats as empty as the rule dictates.

The columns are each separated by one blank column, all the cells in a
column are adjacent.

Any help welcome

regards

Pete