Copying formatting from source spreadsheets using automatic links

[Krista]

hi there,

I am using automatic links to combine small sections of 8 spreadsheets into one spreadsheet. The sources are updated throughout the data and the target spreadsheet needs to automatically reflect those changes. Everything is working fine with the content and content updates. What I cannot figure out how to do is to make the formatting (ie font, font color, cell color) come thru from the source spreadsheets, right now only the content/text comes thru in a default font. Unfortunately the format of the data has meaning and without that, the content only has half the value.

I have tried format painter, but it only copied the current format over, it never reflected changes. I tried to copy>paste special>paste as link but found it to be hit or miss on whether it worked. When it did work, it was not working the following morning.

I am using Excel 2000, all spreadsheets involved are on network drives and are shared. All are in the same folder on the same drive.

thanks in advance for your help!!

 

[Michael]

Have you tried preformatting the target cells, using conditional formatting, based on the values from the original cells?

 

[Krista]

Hi Michael,

I don't think that will work - the 8 spreadsheets are people's schedules and the colors indicate things like weeks they can't travel and weeks they are on vacation, so it's completely manual. I can't think of a way to conditionally format to replicate that.