Deadline Calculator

[Manny]

I am a secretary to a Board. I need to develop a simple method to determine
deadlines for the submission of reports to my Board. What I have is the date
of the next meeting, say 20 May 2010. More or less 10 things must happen at
different fixed time periods before that date, such as that I need Managemnt
Reports 14 days before the meeting so that I could edit it and send it to the
clerk who compiles the agenda. I need the agenda 5 days before the meeting
to check it and I need to send out the agenda 3 days before the meeting. I
have complied a 2 column table in Word 2007 for this purpose. The left hand
column indicates what muts be done, (for example 14 days before the meeting I
must have the reports), and the right hand column contains a date picker
inserted using the developer tab. As soon as all the rows had been completed,
all the dates had been picked and the deadlines are in. It works reasonably
well, but I would love something (in Excel or Word) that could be automated,
in other words if I insert the date of the meeting, the rest of the dates
mutst be inserted automatically. Any ideas?

 

[DL]

Excel; enter the start (primary) date the other entries are based on a
formulae, from the first date

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I am a secretary to a Board. I need to develop a simple method to determine
deadlines for the submission of reports to my Board. What I have is the date
of the next meeting, say 20 May 2010. More or less 10 things must happen at
different fixed time periods before that date, such as that I need Managemnt
Reports 14 days before the meeting so that I could edit it and send it to the
clerk who compiles the agenda. I need the agenda 5 days before the meeting
to check it and I need to send out the agenda 3 days before the meeting. I
have complied a 2 column table in Word 2007 for this purpose. The left hand
column indicates what muts be done, (for example 14 days before the meeting I
must have the reports), and the right hand column contains a date picker
inserted using the developer tab. As soon as all the rows had been completed,
all the dates had been picked and the deadlines are in. It works reasonably
well, but I would love something (in Excel or Word) that could be automated,
in other words if I insert the date of the meeting, the rest of the dates
mutst be inserted automatically. Any ideas?

Should be a fairly simple thing to do with Excel.

Example, two colums, A and B with the following entries:

Meeting Date: 2-Jun-2010
Send invitations =(B1-4)
Print same =(B2-2)

and so on.

=(B1-4) results in a date four days prior to the meeting date in B1
=(B2-2) gives you a date two days prior to the Send Invitations date.

You could (and probably should) get a bit fancier and instead of building the
number of days into the formulae, pick them up from another cell in the
worksheet.