Hi, all,

In column b I have letter grades like B- B and B+
In column c I have the same kinds of letter grades

I have conditionally formatted column c to have a green background if a cell in column c is higher than the cell to the left, column b
I have conditionally formatted column c to have a red background if a cell in column c is lower than the cell to the left, column b
I have conditionally formatted column c to have no background if a cell in column c is the same letter grade as the cell to the left, column b

This works fine EXCEPT Excel 2010 thinks that B is higher than B+; it thinks D+ is lower than D-

Is there a fix for this other than to work off a hidden column with numeric values?

BTW: Columns B and C are copied from cells in other pages of the spreadsheet. Those original cells use the lookup function to create the letter grades

Help, anyone?