Conditional formatting woes

I want to have a cell in one column (G) change to shaded if a non-blank value is entered in column B.
The conditional rule I have used is not(isblank(b5)) (it is applied to cell G5). Nothing happened :-(, so I thought about adding a formula with the same 'rule'. In cell I5 I have the following =not(isblank(b5))

This does work, yielding TRUE if there is a value in B5, and FALSE if there is no value in B5

So:
1) The logical test seems to work (evidenced by I5), but the conditional formatting doesn't.
2) Each time I edit the rule, it gets mangled with extra quotes, and becomes
="not(isblank(b5))". If I change the rule, and precede it with an =[ ie =not(isblank(b5))], the end result is the same :-(


Each time I try to use conditional formatting it seems to take for ever to get a good result. Various books are not particularly helpful, and the MS examples are less than forthcoming.

Does anyone have an unambiguous syntax for setting conditional formatting rules that is robust enough to be used in commercial application?

Thanks,

Tony

Select G5:G10
Go to home tab>>conditional formatting
new rule>>use a formula to determine which cells to format
type in the formula
=b5<>""
Select the format
and its done.......
Hope it helps
Do ask for any other query you may have…

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Regards
Sourabh Gupta

With G5 selected, click on Conditional Formatting | Manage Rules, select the rule shown and click on Edit Rule, and change your formula to this:

=B5<>""

then click OK. You can use the Format Painter icon to apply the same rule to cells below G5.

Hope this helps.

Pete

Thanks for the point about using a related formula.
The 'extra column' showing the result of the formula I was using was only to show that value (ie that Conditional Formatting was not working as I expected). The resolution was - as almost always in such cases - depressingly simple.

T

Many thanks to those who shared the importance of adding a "=" before the formula. I had always regarded this as a different syntactic thingy from the B5<>"", but I suppose those as writes the software get to set the rules. At any rate, the problem is now solved - until I forget it the next time ;-)

Thanks, as always, to this wonderful group,

Tony