Excel Condional Formatting Issue

Question

I have a simple formula that outputs as TRUE when I put it in a cell but when I put the exact same formula in a conditional format the highlight does not show up. There are no other rules being applied to this cell.

=OR(AND(OR(LEFT(I56,1)="U", RIGHT(I56,1)="U"), H$5="Total",H56>$F56), 
AND(OR(LEFT(I56,1)="U", RIGHT(I56,1)="U"), H$5="OC-Normalized",H56>$D56))

I71 = "U"  (TRUE),
H5 = "Total" (TRUE),
H71 = 90,
F71 = 30,
So H71 > F71  (TRUE)

I have about 170 rows and columns A thru AFG. The conditional is only being applied to the first column of data (column H) currently.

I cant figure out how to get the excel table posted here and I don't want to spend half an hour trying. Unless it really helps. The big question for me is WHY would this formula return TRUE in a cell and not in conditional format on the cell?

Returns TRUE but conditional formatting doesn't get applied to the cell. I have tested each individual part of the formula and they all of one of the OR sections returns TRUE.

Answer 1

Blach. I figured it out. I wish the 10 "how to guides" I read mentioned that you have to use the first cells address in your range when applying formatting. Otherwise it gets wonky. Once I did that it all seems to work