Moving cells including formatting but excluding background pattern?

Hi all, greetings from Eastbourne, UK. It's my first post here and so please let me know if the topic was already covered (although I did some digging and couldn't find an answer).

I'm working on a spreadsheet to be used as a schedule for several people. Columns are days and rows are people/slots. At the moment I have 9 people x 4 slots a day x 4 cells per slot. Because it's difficult to read it at first glance, I'm trying to introduce background pattern on every second person for better visibility. We use colors in schedule and move jobs across a lot. I'd like to be able to move slots/cells across including background colour but without background pattern as this needs to stay in fixed place. My manager is used to the method of ctrl+drag for moving stuff around and so this must work together. Is there a way to do this?

Non-disclosed cross-link here: https://www.mrexcel.com/board/thread...cking.1189222/

Hi and welcome to the forum,

Please upload a workbook or a representative cut down copy, anonymised if necessary. It is always easier to advise if we can see your request in its context.

Show a before and after situation with manually calculated results, explaining which information is data and which is results, and if it's not blindingly obvious how you have arrived at your results some explanatory notes as well.

To upload a file click the Go Advanced button at the foot of your post, look underneath the post area for the Manage Attachments section and take it from there.

So are you saying that the background for rows 3:18 must be the same as 35:50
and 19:34 the same as 51:66 and different to 3:18

background pattern - yes. Background colour needs to be movable, and pattern applies on it automatically depending on the row I move it to.


Let me rephrase my question: Is it possible to to have only data entry and background color editable while border thickness and background pattern would be defined permanently for certain cell ranges, and this includes copying and moving cells?

Sorry but It's still not clear.

In post #2 I asked for a before and after situation. i.e. show what you start with, tell us what you mean by Move and/or copy and describe exactly which cells you select and what you do with them, then manually add the results you expect to see. If the format/number of people or rows per person change please make sure that situation is represented.

Originally Posted by Richard Buttrey

Sorry but It's still not clear.

In post #2 I asked for a before and after situation. i.e. show what you start with, tell us what you mean by Move and/or copy and describe exactly which cells you select and what you do with them, then manually add the results you expect to see. If the format/number of people or rows per person change please make sure that situation is represented.

OK, I'd like to set up borders and background pattern for selected cells/ranges. These parameters are to be set once for all, locked and not to be easily changed. Afterwards, we'll put data and apply background colour to selected cells. These values will be moved around.

For example:
in sheet attached in post 3 there is a Job 123 allocated to Person 1 (red background) and Job 456 allocated to Person 2 (blue background). To re-allocate Job 123 from Person 1 to Person 2 we select cells F11:F14 and drag them down to range F27:F30. There is no background pattern for Person 1 but there is one for Person 2 and so I need this pattern to automatically apply over the moved cells.

Similarly, when re-allocating Job 456 (blue cells) from Person 2 to Person 3, background pattern will not be moved.

In other words - dotted background pattern is defined for ranges corresponding to Person 2, Person 4, Person 6 etc, and blank pattern defined for Person 1, Person 3, Person 5 etc. When copying/moving cells from one person to another, pattern will apply or not depending on where the cell is being placed.

Border thickness is set up for the whole sheet and so when job is being cut/moved, borders will stay as they were instead of just disappear like they tend to.

I hope it make sense now

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