I've searched the board this morning without much luck. Hoping someone can
point me in a better direction.

Here is what I have.

I have a survey of 30 questions. Each question has three parts, which users
are asked to rank with a value of 1, 2 or 3. They do this for each of the 30
sets.

I have created a directions page for this survey, but as I am sure you have
experienced users don't read directions. Some users are adding values other
than 1, 2 or 3 and others still are using the same value more than once
within a set. For example, INCORRECT ENTRY: A=1, B=1, C=3 CORRECT ENTRY:
A=1, B=2, C=3.

I have a cell for each of the ranked values for each of the three parts. I
can use data validation to prevent users from picking values other than 1, 2,
or 3 easily. Where it's getting sticky is trying to come up with a method to
keep them from using the same value more than once in the same set. I
started to approach this with conditional formats that checked (condition
1)=b2=b4, (condition 2)=b4=b6, (condition 3)=b6=b2. The conditional format
displayed an error message I had in a cell next to the answer fields with
default text color of white. Some users are still ignoring the error
messages...

I am guessing there is a better way, that actually prevents the users from
making the wrong choices.

Any ideas? (thanks in advance)