Conditional formatting not copying

[blueneptune146]

I have a spreadsheet to track attendance violations at my job. Our policy allows for violations to expire. This expiration date changes the further you progress, though. What I'm trying to do is have my cell blacked out if the cell next to it contains a date later than it. So, for example, cell S15 has the date of 1/1/2015, but cell T15 has the date of 4/1/2015. Right now, both of these dates will appear. What I'd like to happen is the shading of S15 to become black since the date in T15 is after it.

I have figured out how to do this with conditional formatting and it works perfectly. I select the cell (We'll use S15 again as an example), select conditional formatting, click new rule, then select "Format only cells that contain" and make it so it formats if the value is less than the value in T15. Works perfectly and shows me exactly what I want to see.

The only thing I can't seem to get to work right is copying the formatting to the other rows. I've tried clicking the cell (which makes the value absolute $T$15) and that doesn't work. I've tried hand keying the cell location (T15) and no matter what, it copies that same condition into each one regardless of whether I'm using format painter or copying the cell and pasting it below. I'd like it to change it to T16 when I go one row below, but it stays T15 on every row.

Basically, I'm not trying to adjust each cell individually that needs this formatting. I'd like it to copy the formatting from one row to the next and have Excel automatically changethe reference cell as it goes along, but I can't seem to get excel to do that.

[blueneptune146]

Wow I solved my own issue 3 minutes after posting. If anybody else has this problem, apparently the solution was to make mixed instead of absolute or relative. So, it became $T15 instead of $T$15 or just simply T15. I swear I tried that before posting, but I guess the stars became aligned or something.

[JeteMc]

Glad that you got your formatting to work the way you want, however if the stars should become unaligned here is another possibility.
Select conditional formatting, click new rule then "Use formula to determine which cells to format".
Put in your formula i.e.

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This will let the rule flow from cell to cell throughout the range.
Make sure that the "applies to:" box contains the entire range of cells that you wish to receive the formatting rule. i.e.

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Take a look at the way that this spreadsheet is formatted, using the above description.

Attachment 409315

Hope this helps.