I am making a time-sheet schedule for my department, and want to make
it so that when I type in a person's name into a field, the text-color
will automagically change to a pre-defined color, and possibly cell
background color (background will not always be needed though).

Example:

When I type in the name "Ted", I want Excel to automatically change
the text color to Red.
When I type in "Michelle", I want the text color to automatically change to Blue.
When I type "Dave", it needs to change to Yellow with a black
background for that cell only.
Then "Steve" and it colors his name in Brown.
I think you get the picture....  

I'm using Excel 2000, but soon to be XP so I need any solution to be
backwards compatible.  I'm not sure if I need to do this via a
pre-programmed macro, or if I can use an auto-correct feature in Excel
to change pre-defined field values...???.....

Any answer must include step-by-step instructions to set this up, or
if a macro, the exact code.

Any needed clarifications will be promptly posted.

Thanks a lot!

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Request for Question Clarification by mathtalk-ga on 14 Nov 2003 08:04 PST

Hi, ghettoboy-ga:

Into what kind of "field" is the text being entered?  Is it regular
spreadsheet cells, or is this text entry to a "form" within Excel?

thanks, mathtalk-ga

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Clarification of Question by ghettoboy-ga on 14 Nov 2003 10:52 PST

Just a regular cell.  No forms or other macros involved.

ghettoboy-ga

If the number of options that will be listed in the "Name feild" will
be four (Dave, Michelle, Ted and ghettoboy), then there is a very
simple solution.  If the options are greater than four then this will
not work.

What you need to use is conditional formatting, here is how to set it up.

1)Select all of the cells that would have the names entered into them.
2)On the Menu bar select Format then Conditional Format.
3)An entry window for Conditional Formatting will appear.
4)For condition 1, Drop menu should read as follows.
         Cell Value is,  Equal to , ="Ted" , and then select the
format for Ted entry Fontcolor = red.
5)Add another condition, follow instruction line 4 for this condition
(Michelle) and the last condition (Dave).  You can have 3 conditional
formats and the fourth would be unchanged.

I hope that this gets done what you need.  post if you need more clarification.

Deitzgen