I can not thank you enough for getting back so quickly. I will try to answer
all your questions. There are thirteen menu items in the list. They are on the
same spreadsheet as the lists, I just hid their rows a few lines below the main
data section to make it easier for me. There are nine distinct colors I wanted
to use. Five items on the list  share one color  and the rest have unique colors
tied to them. There are up to 264 cells all linked to this same validation
list, but they have no relationship to each other. I have multiple business
units reporting activities completed each week based on this validation  list of
tasks. I hope this helps you in understanding my issue better.

On a much more ambitious note, once the above works is there any way at the
bottom of each weeks column to automate a sum of the range of the Tools $ column
that just sums the tasks of the same color? (Note the tasks and colors would be
the cells two to the left of the range that is being added).