I want to write an excel macro that looks at a cell, matches its color
against a known color value, and then assigns a value to another cell.

The difficulty is knowing how to assess the cell, and knowing what the excel
standard color numbers are.

for example I should be able to use something like:

If aCell.interior.colorindex = 36 then
anotherCell.value = 1
end if

I am just not addressing the cell properly and I also do not know how to
come up with the color index (e.g. I do not know what number red is, what
number cyan is, etc.).