Conditional Formatting Woes

[NewYears1978]

Let me just start by saying I HATE CONDITIONAL FORMATTING.

I use it a lot for a lot of things but it randomly breaks, for no reason. I have simple conditional formatting that if a cell in column R equals some text, highlight the whole row a color.
I use this all the time.

Randomly that same code in another form breaks and no longer works..for no reason. I cannot figure out why.

It's simply

=$R1="X"

Then =$A:$AA

Why doesn't this work in one form but does in another?

[ChemistB]

Not sure what is a range and what is a criteria in your example. Can you upload an example of Conditional formatting not working the way you want it to?

[NewYears1978]

I got sidetracked by 50 other projects, I will have to come back to this when I can and see if I can recreate the problem in a sample file. Thanks for your reply!