I'm a basic Excel user, but need help with a weird application. For Excel 2007, I want to build a cell with mult-colored dots (wingding character) based on whether there is a 1 in multiple other fields. For example if cell C4 has a 1 then the field should have a blue dot, if C4 and C5 have a 1, the field should have a blue and green dot. If only C5 has a 1 there should be only a green dot. There will be a total of 8 fields determining a maximum of 8 different colored dots.

Have you tried to write an Nested IF statement based on the criteria, with the cell containing the formula formatted to match your dots requirement? For example, I formatted B1 as windings and entered this formula: =IF(AND(C4=1,C5=1),"lm",IF(C4=1,"l",IF(C5=1,"m",""))) A wingding "l" is a black dot and a wingding "m" is an open dot. Therefore, based on the contents of C4 and C5, I'll get a specific set of dots in B1. Remember that you can only have 7 Nested IFs, which should give you your 8 criteria if set up correctly. Good luck!

Hi - this works to get different characters in the cell, but does not get different colors. I've tried substituting cell references in the string instead of literals, but the color attributes don't come with the reference. For example, =IF(B3=1,$G$7,"") & IF(C3=1,$G$8,"") & IF(D3=1,$G$9,"") where G7, G8 and G9 have Wingding characters of different colors. The problem seems to be you can't copy the color attributes from one cell to another. Thanks for the input! Any other ideas?