How to color specific cells if another cell contains a string in Excel?

Question

I am trying to change the fill and font color of only A2 and B2 if E2 contains the string "departments" for example.

I have found formulas that highlight the whole row, but I only want select cells of the row while actually formatting with colors, and I can't quite get it right with conditional formatting.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Use a rule based on the following formula:

=SEARCH("departments",$E1)>0

and apply it to columns A and B.

_{You can also simplify the formula to just =SEARCH("departments",$E1)}