I am trying to apply conditional formatting to a cell, using a reference to another sheet. I believe this can be done using named ranges or the indirect function.

My named range is current_date which is in sheet: dates B3. I want to compare this to another date in the same tab i.e. dates A3.

I have entered the following into the conditional formatting formula:

=("'current_date'">indirect("'dates'!a3") and am getting a message that I am missing a parenthesis.

The reason I am using indirect is because I cannot name the range in a3 because it starts at 01/01/2009 and goes down to 2017.

Can anyone suggest a solution?

Thanks