Changing the font color is one way to represent the selected item in the drop-down. You could just as easily use the Fill property instead. How to change the color of a cell in an Excel drop-down ...

By looking at your spreadsheet, cells should now be organized by Font Color. Read: How to copy values from the Status Bar in Excel How to add colors to cells in Excel?

Excel allows defined functions to be executed in Worksheets by a user. Instead of a formula based on the color of a cell, it is better to write a function that can detect the color of the cell and ...

There is an easier way. Highlight cell a1:g7 and set conditional format style to 3-color scale. Set minimum number to -1, midpoint number to 0, and max number to 1. Much quicker method.

Counting records or values in Microsoft Excel is easy. Counting individual cells by their fill color definitely isn't. Using an old function and a matrix tames the problem.