I'm using that arcane trick where you set the format of a cell to a text
value - for instance if the cell is a 2, I set use "Format Cells..." and set
the cell format to "Custom" and the format code to "Initial Planning
complete". I do this to be able to display the value "Initial Planning
complete" as a data label.

This works well, but it's a manual task. I'm looking for a way to apply the
custom format code for each cell, using a formula somehow. The format code
would come from another cell, ideally.

I'd like to avoid using VBA to do this, although that'd be easiest... Is
there any way to do this using formulas? Thanks for any ideas.