formating according to how far away a value is from ideal value

Formating according to how far away a value is from an ideal value. E.g. ideal value is 100, the lowest value 10 should become dark red, 20 ligther red, 30 maybe orange etc. the nearer it gets to the ideal value the greener (or less red or whatever) it becomes. The same for the other direction for numbers over 100.

Conditional formatting is what you need.

By the way, please do not forget to respond to those who helped you in your first thread here - I notice you haven't yet done so. Thanks.

Yes - as I said, look at conditional formatting, in particular colour scales: https://support.office.com/en-ie/art...b-fe00f3378fb9.

Will you please attach a sample Excel workbook? We are not able to work with or manipulate a picture of one and nobody wants to have to recreate your data from scratch.

1. Make sure that your sample data are REPRESENTATIVE of your real data. The use of unrepresentative data is very frustrating and can lead to long delays in reaching a solution.

2. Make sure that your desired results are also shown (mock up the results manually).

3. Make sure that all confidential data is removed or replaced with dummy data first (e.g. names, addresses, E-mails, etc.).

4. Try to avoid using merged cells as they cause lots of problems.

Unfortunately the attachment icon doesn't work at the moment, so to attach an Excel file you have to do the following: just before posting, scroll down to Go Advanced and then scroll down to Manage Attachments. Now follow the instructions at the top of that screen.

Please pay particular attention to point 2 (above): without an idea of your intended outcomes, it is often very difficult to offer appropriate advice.

something like this: (first line are the ideal values. The first 4 are maximum values, the optimal is below. The last one is a should be, but a bit above is ok. PS: it doesnt really matter what color it has, just that the further away the stronger i.e. the ideal values can also be yellow, above/below to green, below/above to red)

Conditional formatting using a 3 color scale is most likely what you're looking for. I'm not sure I understand your description of the data, but you should be able to play around with the settings for the 3 color scale to achieve what you want. If you can provide more details on the data, we might be able to help further.

yeees this was exactly what I was searching, now I feel a bit stupid thank you

Glad I could point you in the right direction. And never feel stupid for asking questions!