LibreOffice conditional formatting based on string value: strange behavior

Solution 1:

You can also use the following as an 'easier to read' option.

If you wrap the string that you want to search for in quotation marks, it will work fine.

So select 'Cell Value is', 'equal to' and in the criteria box put "Yes", including the quotation marks. This should now work.

Solution 2:

It should work with "Formula is" and the following formula:

FIND("yes";A1;1)

and

FIND("no";A1;1)

Instead of FIND, you could also use the SEARCH function; there are slight differences between those two functions (case sensitivity, availability of regular expressions). See this OpenOffice.org Forum Thread on this issue.