Conditional formatting of letters for grades, with a difference

[iduzeducate]

Hi all,

Hoping you can help me out with some wizardry! I'm a teacher and am trying to colour code some data but have run into difficulty. I've applied the formula from this thread http://www.excelforum.com/excel-form...ur-coding.html but want to do it slightly differently.

I'm using the same comparison of Current grade to Target grade and want the colours to relate to the grades as per the following:
2 grades difference = yellow
3 grades or more = red


For example:
example.PNG

I will be using it to identify the worst underachievers so I dont need any greens on there yet.

Also, I have been running into trouble with A* grades as excel doesn't recognise the *. Is there a way around this?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[bebo021999]

Apply these formulas in Condition Formatting follow priority order:

1st: =CODE(LEFT(A2))-CODE(B2)>=3; format as red
2nd:=CODE(LEFT(A2))-CODE(B2)>=2; format as yellow