Excel

[Cockney Guy]

I'm looking for some IT advice, wonder if anyone can assist? Having a list of casual workers on an Excel spreadsheet, is there any way that if certain people are unable to work on certain dates, for example holidays and so on, would it be possible to manually input the relevent dates and have the Excel spreadsheet automatically flash up the fact that that person is temporarily unavailable to work by changing the colour of a cell by his or her name, for example?

[diudiu]

Are you using excel 2003 or excel 2007?

[Cockney Guy]

The old one but this is for a charity and there might be enough funds to buy a later version, I would need to check.
Thanks for your reply so early.

[ACtheTROLL]

you don't need to waste money updating excel for such a simple task

so a 365 column calendar using a row for each person is the most obvious
(you could also just buy a wall planner from any stationers)
you get a range of sticky coulours (one for each person)
or on a spreadsheet just put an x in the days they are / or aren't available

using conditional formatting ... if cell = 0 green, if x - red

then in both cases just look at the display

[Lil O'lady]

GPs often have more wall planners from the drugs companies then they know what to do with. I agree with AC that the far simpler way to solve this one is to use a wall chart calendar.
Or, have a play around with an online calendar such as http://www.calendars.net/ - it's definitely a task for a calendar rather than for excel.

[Cockney Guy]

Thanks guys, that all makes good sense. However, unlike any ordinary commercial situation, the volunteers can call in at any time and say like " I will be going to mum's tomorrow" or "My car is going in for repair next Tuesday" so its not quite like a an office where time unavailable can be booked long in advance, it could be for example, he/she only works mon, wed and Friday and there can be up to a hundred volunteers, so a quick glance at an ever changing situation is required.. Good thinking though and I will explore all your good advice for the solution. Cheers folks and thanks again, all very much appreciated.