Hi Darrian,
For normal cell formatting with color you should be formatting
the entire row when you want the entire row to be one color.   Select
the row by clicking on the row number.

It is a lot more efficient that Excel have one format for the row instead
of individual formats to cells.    It also works better if you insert
or delete columns.    You can check Help  for   "format painter"

Same applies for columns, though it is not what you want in this
question --  formatting the  entire column is preferred to individually
formatted cells.

You can do things perhaps authomaticlly with Conditional Formatting,  but you will
have to use $ sign in front of the column in your address to make
sure that it is a specific column that is being checked rather than
each cell being checked.
   Conditional Formatting    (Limited to 5 color choices per cell)
    http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/condfmt.htm
You can use an Event macro or an addin if you need more than 5 colors
see links on the above page.

---
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel    [site changed  Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages:  http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page:        http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm