More of an annoyed rant and a quest of why but:

I discovered that when having a list of conditions to evaluate (on hold - open - open passed due - closed in that order) that if the circumstances allow for say past due and on hold to resolve as true, thus satisfying two of the conditions, the last in the order is executed instead of the first correct condition encountered... why?

This seems to be counter intuitive unless I'm missing something? If it encounters the first condition in the list and it resolves as true, why waste time continuing down and evaluating the others in the list???

Because the conditions and/or the formats are not necessarily mutually exclusive - see:

http://fmforums.com/forum/topic/81195-conditional-formatting/page__view__findpost__p__377137

That makes way too much scene....should have let my brain think outside this little instance.....

Thanks for the link to that post.