Conditional formatting using AND() function - excel

Question

I'm trying conditional formatting on a sheet. I need to fill the cells with a certain color according to the following conditional statement:
=AND((INDIRECT(ADDRESS(4;COLUMN()))>=INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW();4)));(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(4;COLUMN()))<=INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW();5))))
When I try the statements in the AND() function separately, they seem to work, but when I put them together in the function I don't see any formatting happening.
Here is some background:
Row 4 of the "current column" has a date (DATE1) in it. There are also dates on the D and E columns of the "current row" (DATE2 and DATE3). So, I would like to fill the cell with a color if DATE1 is between DATE2 and DATE3.
I cannot see why the formula is not working. Any help is much appreciated.
Update (Dec 13, 2011):
I implemented a function that I call from the cells I need this functionality. The function returns integer values. Then conditional formatting only uses the integers in the cells. This way, the conditional formatting is less complicated. I'm passing INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW();COLUMN())) into the function I implement. So, I have all the information I need when working on relative and/ or absolute cells. Would be great to know a simpler way to pass the current cell as range into the function.
Note: ActiveCell didn't seem to work for me. It uses the data from the cell which is selected by the time the function is run. That's not what I'm looking for. I could of course pass the cell itself (as in A4, B7, etc.) but I'm not sure if it really matters in terms of performance.
Thanks to all of you who responded to my question.

Answer 1

I was having the same problem with the AND() breaking the conditional formatting. I just happened to try treating the AND as multiplication, and it works! Remove the AND() function and just multiply your arguments. Excel will treat the booleans as 1 for true and 0 for false. I just tested this formula and it seems to work.
=(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(4,COLUMN()))>=INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(),4)))*(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(4,COLUMN()))<=INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(),5)))

Answer 2

You can use a much simpler formula. I just created a new workbook to test it.
Column A = Date1 | Column B = Date2 | Column C = Date3
Highlight Column A and enter the conditional formatting formula:
=AND(A1>B1,A1<C1)

Answer 3

I had a similar problem with a less complicated formula:
= If (x > A & x <= B)
and found that I could Remove the AND and join the two comparisons with +
= (x > A1) + (x <= B1) [without all the spaces]
Hope this helps others with less complex comparisons.

Answer 4

This is probably because of the column() and row() functions. I am not sure how they are applied in conditional formatting. Try creating a new column with the value from this formula and then use it for your formatting needs.

Answer 5

COLUMN() and ROW() won't work this way because they are applied to the cell that is calling them. In conditional formatting, you will have to be explicit instead of implicit.
For instance, if you want to use this conditional formating on a range begining on cell A1, you can try:
`COLUMN(A1)` and `ROW(A1)`
Excel will automatically adapt the conditional formating to the current cell.

Answer 6

I am currently responsible for an Excel application with a lot of legacy code. One of the slowest pieces of this code was looping through 500 Rows in 6 Columns, setting conditional formatting formulae for each. The formulae are to identify where the cell contents are non-blank but do not form part of a Named Range, therefore referring twice to the cell itself, originally written as:
=AND(COUNTIF(<rangename>,<cellref>)=0,<cellref><>"")
Obviously the overheads would be much reduced by updating all Cells in each Column (Range) at once. However, as noted above, using ADDRESS(ROW(),COLUMN(),n) does not work in this circumstance, i.e. this does not work:
=AND(COUNTIF(<rangename>,ADDRESS(ROW(),COLUMN(),1))=0,ADDRESS(ROW(),COLUMN(),1)<>"")
I experimented extensively with a blank workbook and could find no way around this, using various alternatives such as ISBLANK. In the end, to get around this, I created two User-Defined Functions (using a tip I found elsewhere on this site):
Public Function returnCellContent() As Variant
returnCellContent = Application.Caller.Value
End Function
Public Function Cell_HasContent() As Boolean
If Application.Caller.Value = "" Then
Cell_HasContent = False
Else
Cell_HasContent = True
End If
End Function
The conditional formula is now:
=AND(COUNTIF(<rangename>,returnCellContent()=0,Cell_HasContent())
which works fine.
This has sped the code up, in Excel 2010, from 5s to 1s. Because this code is run whenever data is loaded into the application, this saving is significant and noticeable to the user. It's also a lot cleaner and reusable.
I've taken the time to post this because I could not find any answers on this site or elsewhere that cover all of the circumstances, whilst I'm sure that there are others who could benefit from the above approach, potentially with much larger numbers of cells to update.

Answer 7

Same issues as others reported - using Excel 2016. Found that when applying conditional formulas against tables; AND, multiplying the conditions, and adding the conditions failed. Had to create the TRUE/FALSE logic myself:
=IF($C2="SomeText",0,1)+IF(INT($D2)>1000,0,1)=0