Conditional Formatting Based on Formula Changes

[hjm]

Hello - Ultimately, I am trying to highlight certain cells yellow only if they have been changed by my formula tool. For example, the first formula is an IF statement that says: IF Column A Contains "VAR" then update Column Q to say "Equity Forward" (the original value was something else). I have multiple formulas that all work this same way. I am trying to use the Basic Table tool, but can't figure out the right formula. Wondering if anyone has the correct formula, or have an even easier way to apply this kind of conditional formatting to any cell that has been updated. All suggestions are greatly appreciated! 

[cpet13]

Hello @hjm. If the formula changes column Q to be Equity Forward, is that a value that shows up originally in the column? Or is what the formula changes the value to be going to be a brand-new value for the column? If it is a brand-new value, you could just change all cells that have the new value. If it isn't a brand-new value for the column, you could possibly just make it so that it is a brand-new value (eg. Equity Forward*, * indicating it was generated by a formula).

[hjm]

Hi @cpet13. The values will not be brand new. That's a great idea to use something like *,* to indicate it was generated by the formula. Question then based on that... will the *,* then be shown in the output? Or is that a sort of hidden wildcard? 

[cpet13]

@hjm * was just an example character, you could use any other character you wanted, such as | or ^, etc. I believe it would show up in the output. If you use just a single * that might not be too distracting, though that is up to you to decide and what the output would be eventually used for.

[hjm]

@cpet13 I see. There can't be any erroneous characters in the output, however I could exclude these later in the workflow. Thank you for the suggestion. 

[cpet13]

Yeah, if you could do that, that would be the simplest solution that I can think of. Another potential solution would be to create an entirely new field that would flag if the cell had been changed by a formula. Then in the output you would just exclude that field. But if the first suggestion works, that may be the simplest, I feel.