Assign Color and count colored cells

Don Bucknall wrote:
Now if I typ an x or a dot in a cell next to a name I would like it to change to a color.

If you want the cell with the X to turn color, you can use conditional formatting. In the cell inspector (the "42" tab), click on 'Show Rules". The format you want to create is "if text is x then fill red".

And in a other tab I want it to count the amount of cells colored(say red) and multiply by 0.5.

You cannot count the number of colored cells but you can count the number of x's. It's going to be the same number. Use COUNTIF for this. It'll be something like =0.5*COUNTIF(B2:C4,"x").

Neither the conditional format nor the COUNTIF care about capitalization. An "x" is the same as an "X" as far as they are concerned.

Hello

It seems that I didnt'd understood the question like you.
When I read :

Now if I type an x or a dot in a cell next to a name I would like it to change to a color.

I understand that the OP want to change the color of the name, not the color of the 'x'.
Alas, this isn't easy to achieve.
It was already explained in older threads ** I have no spare time to search for the OP 😟

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 11 juin 2010 18:39:32

The imprecision of language is a barrier to clear communication.

If your interpretation is correct, it is, as you said, difficult to color the names. Not impossible but difficult due to how conditional formatting is implemented.

So, assuming the OP meant that the name would be colored, that means each row will count as either a 1 if there are one or more x's in the row or 0 if there are no x's in the row. For the count, I would use a column with something like H2=IF(COUNTIF(B2:G2,"x")>0,1,0) then I would sum that column. COUNTA might also work instead of COUNTIF if the non-x'd cells are blank. The format for the column with names would be something like "if cell H2=1 then fill red". This format would have to be modified for each row, changing H2 to H3, H4, H5 etc.