Several years back, I wrote an article on how to use multiple cells to simulate conditional formats that involved more than 3 conditions. Three versions of Excel later, I still receive requests related to this post. So, I updated it to include more screenshots and a downloadable file.
In Excel 2003 and earlier, conditional formatting works well for up to three conditions. But even when the number of conditions exceeds that limit, it is possible to do without any programming support. For example, one possible way to show twelve possible rankings through color is shown below.
For more see http://www.tushar-mehta.com/excel/newsgroups/worksheet_as_chart/
