I'm using Excel 2003 and I have a simple spreadsheet showing actual cumulative monthly sales (Row 1)against cumulative monthly targets (Row 2).

Row 3 categorises the relevant sales against the appropriate targets as either "above" (if sales are above target), "on" (if sales match target) and "below" (if sales are below target).

What I'm trying to do show the progress from the previous month to the current month and return a value which tells me whether it's the same, whether it's gone up (from either "below" to "on" or from "on" to "above") or whether it's gone down (from either "above" to "on" or from "on" to "below").

The attached spreadsheet should make things clearer. Cell P6 (highlighted yellow)should return a value of "Up" because Nov was below and Dec is above. Cell P6 should then beable to return the appropriate value once Jan is completed.

I appreciate that there mightn't be a single solution and that I may have to devise a formula which returns just the latest and the previous months position and then another to compare the two. I've already tried doing this using =IF(COUNTA(C6:N6)=0,"",IF(COUNTA(C6:N6)=1,C6... (and so on) but it seems to not want to play once I get past six conditions.

Any help would be much appreciated.

And I apologise if title I've given is a bit unclear.

Thanks

Ed

example1.xls