How would I apply formatting to another cell based on whether another cell's date has passed or not?

Question

I'm working on making a spreadsheet in Google Sheets, and I'm attempting to have a column of names and then a column of dates adjacent to it.

I'd like to set up some sort of conditional formatting that checks if a cell's date has past or not, and if it has, formats the corresponding cell in the name column with a strikethrough.

   Names  |  Dates | Etc.
Name Here |  Date  | ---
Name 2    |  Date2 | ---

So if the second date listed under "Dates" already passed (aka 1/10/16 as opposed to 2/19/16 compared to today's date, 1/19/16), then the second name listed under "Names" would appear formatted with strikethrough (like you had crossed it out).

Answer 1

This is similar to Conditional formatting based on comparison with today's date and also with a future date except you want to format another cell, not the one with the date.

1. Select the range of names (for example, A2:A10)
2. Apply conditional formatting with Custom formula... =B2<TODAY(). Here B2 appears because it is the correct cell to look at when formatting A2, the top of the range. For the cells A3, A4, ... the formula will automatically be interpreted correctly.