A color coding row in a spreadsheet to show status of an item only creates data for the eye to interpret. If you color code, you’re doing work to categorize something that can’t be used by a formula later. It is easy for a human to decipher, but not easy for a computer.

Log your status in a column for each row, instead of using colors. You can reference that data programmatically to

  • Create conditional formatting to color code that row based on the status column
  • Write formulas and dependencies 
  • Sort and filter