Hi - using Excel 2003:

I'm stumped on conditional formatting for a comparing 2 columns of
text values per row.

So ....

Current     Compare   Contract#
Name       To

A              B               C
Smith       Smith         123456
Jones       Greenburg   111222
Johnson    Johnson      222111

Column B, Row 2 should be Highlighted

Here's the conditional formatting I've applied:
FormulaIs = B1<>A1

& then paste the formula down column B

This has the effect of highlighting every cell, where it seems to
evaluate to true all the time.  Try this with different variations of $
$$$ & it's about the same effect.

Two things to mention:

1.) I use this same method on a column with Number values & it works
perfectly
2.) The names in column B are based on the following formula:

=INDEX(PI_Last,MATCH(B2,Contract,0))

Where PI_Last is a named range of text (names) on another sheet in the
workbook and Contract is a named range of text values on the current
spreadsheet (Col C).    I'm trying to compare where the names are
different for same contract between the two spreadsheets.

Thanks in advance for help.