This is the kind of workflow frustration that should have been solved years ago, and the fact that it still requires manual, repetitive work every few weeks is a sign that traditional spreadsheets have stopped serving their users. The user who posted this question is not asking for a miracle, they are asking for basic persistence of intent, and the tools they are using are failing to deliver it.
Let's be clear about what is happening here. Every time this person reruns their report, they lose the color coding that gives their data meaning at a glance. Green means one thing, orange means another, grey means the project is gone. That is not a cosmetic preference, it is a functional layer of information that the spreadsheet itself does not recognize or preserve. The user is forced to act as the manual bridge between raw data and actionable insight, comparing two sheets by eye and re-applying highlights project by project. That is not a workflow problem; it is a design failure.
What this user needs is a tool that understands data as more than rows and columns. They need a spreadsheet that can retain formatting rules based on the content of the cells themselves, not just the file format. When a report is rerun, the new data should automatically inherit the visual logic that was applied to the old data. Smith is green, Doe is orange, Jones is unhighlighted, these assignments should travel with the data, not require a human to re-encode them each time. That is not advanced AI; it is basic relational awareness.
The practical takeaway here is that the user's time is being spent on manual reconciliation, not analysis or decision-making. They are doing the work that the tool should be doing. A modern, AI-native spreadsheet can scan the old report, identify which rows and colors matter, and apply those same highlights to the new report automatically. It can also handle the edge case, grey projects that drop off, by simply not carrying them forward. That is not a long stretch. It is a straightforward application of pattern matching and conditional logic, and it is the kind of feature that turns a monthly chore into a five-second refresh.
Stop accepting the manual overhead. If your spreadsheet cannot remember what you told it last time, it is time to explore a tool that treats your data as something worth preserving, not just something to export.