Excel reverting back to old formats.

Hey, all. I'm a pretty basic Excel user, but my problem is pretty much exactly what the thread title says.

I have a spreadsheet for my work that is essentially a calendar that keeps track of when our conference rooms are booked. I have a color coding scheme based on certain criteria, but when the year rolls around, I have to delete it all and start over. No problem at all, as we only tally up monthly and yearly totals, so once that's done, I'm good.

However, since this is the first full year that we've done this, I've noticed that when I go back and clear formats, when I type things in for the new year, the old color coding will come back.

For example, in a cleared cell, I'll type a name that should be coded, say, blue, but it'll recall what the cell was previously and make it yellow, which is what it had been for the previous year.

Am I missing something? I just use "clear formats" so only the cells that have been used start blank again. Should it be doing this? Sorry if this is some weirdly basic question... I'm a weirdly basic user.

EDIT: Also, since my calendar has a background color itself, is it possible to quickly reformat the cells to default back to that background rather than just white?

It might be that those colours were put in via Conditional Formatting, and if you want to clear them you will need to use the sub-menu from that icon - there are 2 choices: Clear Rules from selected cells, and Clear Rules from Entire sheet.

Hope this helps.

Pete

I checked, and there don't seem to be any rules under the conditional formatting rules. Huh...