Conditional Formatting based on Text

Hi Everyone,

This is my first time here. I love what you do. Hope you can help me.

I have a list of 11 different objects that I rank from 1-11 every year for 10 years. I have assigned a different fill color to each object. I want to create a formula that will copy that formatting for each object in my yearly ranking table. Is there a formula I can use to look up text and apply formatting matching that text?

For example:

Objects
Apples - RED
Oranges - Orange
Grapes - Purple
Banana - Yellow
etc

2007
Apples
Oranges
Grapes
Banana

2008
Banana
Grapes
Oranges
Apples

etc

IF not I guess I'll do it manually but I figure there's gotta be a way. Thanks for your help.

You can try:
1. select range of all years with fruits (sth like A1:A10000)
2. define in CF 11 times (eleven fruits?) =A1="Apples" and set color (next rule: =A1="Banana" and set another color) etc...
on the end you will get 11 rules

Thanks Sandy. I'll try that. I though there might be a more efficient way where I could reference my legend of object/colors and use that as a conditional formatting rule. I'm sure this will work though.