Windows7 + Office 2007

I have a spreadsheet that lists a variety of companies in a column, each with its own row. Along the row of each company are columns with various actions categories. Within the 'action taken' cell is a date--the date upon which I had taken an action. I would like to have a mechanism within these dated cells that would allow for an alarm to 'wake up' the spreadsheet and tell me, "ah! n days have passed and now is probably a good time to get back with this company."

I do not see anything within the spreadsheet absent programming that will do something similar to what I want...am I missing something?



Thanks,

Mark

One solution would be to put something like this formula in a cell adjacent (on the same row) to the "action taken" cell (assuming here that we're on the second row and the "action taken" cell is in column B):

Of course, you can change the number of days and the message, but essentially whenever the given number of days have passed, the message will be displayed. You can format the cell to display in red to make it more noticeable.

An alternate method would be to use Conditional Formatting on the "action taken" cells so that if the value of the cell is less than:

--the text of the action cell displays as red (or some other color, or a distinctive font, or whatever).

I inserted and tested your suggestion number one and it works as advertised--thanks.

However, I have a need that may exceed the ability of Excel. I do not often open this spreadsheet. The number of companies listed is roughly 40, their dates of contact are mostly staggered and the time between re-contact is generally greater than 90 days. Therefore, although the script works fine once the spreadsheet is opened, while Excel is closed the script is of no help.

What I REALLY need is for the script to 'wake-up' (load) the spreadsheet or place an alert on the desktop or in some way to tell me to open and check the spreadsheet. Is such a mechanism out of the realm of reason?

Thanks,

Mark

When Excel isn't running, it isn't running; if a spreadsheet isn't open, it's not doing anything. This sounds like something for the MS Outlook Calendar.