Pre-Deadline Warning

[Landscape Architect]

In word, If I wanted a project that I have listed to have the box turn red on
a certain date, how would I do it. For example, on nov.20, I have a
submission project number 1234. 2 days before it's due, I want word box to
highlight that project name and number in red so I and everyone in my office
knows that project is soon due. I would normally do this in outlook but our
projects are listed in word

 

[Jay Freedman]

As an architect, I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of a project that
isn't spec'd completely. This is one of those.

- Is there a reason the project information, or at least the due date info,
isn't stored in Outlook? That would be better, because Word can't do
anything about popping up a reminder unless you manually open the document.

- Is this Word document based on a template specifically for that type of
document, or is it just a list in an ordinary document based on the
Normal.dot template (i.e., started as a "blank document")? This will
determine where the macro is stored, and possibly how it recognizes the
project document.

- Where is the document stored? On a single machine, on a server with a
public folder, or something else?

- How are the project names and dates arranged in the document? Are they in
a table, in regular text formatted with a specific style, or just "plain old
text"? In other words, how would the macro recognize project due dates as
opposed to any other dates in the document?

- Do you (or at least someone) open this document every business day? Does
it ever sit open overnight?

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Landscape Architect]

Thank you for the prompt response.
I would like to add some additional information obmitted earlier.
Previously at our firm, every employee wrote by hand our schedule and this
was submitted to our supervisors who then re-typed out schedules including
tasks and project numbers weekly. As of today, we had this bright idea of
having everyone electronicly update their own schedules and as of an hour
ago, this information is now also in excel. Since this is a "New" concept, we
have the ability to design this spreadhshet/worksheet however we desire.

Now, to answer your questions:

1. We do not have these reminders in outlook because we had problems with
reminders on our shared office outlook calendar, and the information is
already in word and Excel.

2.information was entered on an ordinary document/blank document

3.These documents are located on our server

4&5 Projects are arranged by number in a table in word and in excel, I
believe each column now holds different information. A sample project number
is 3214.007

 

[macropod]

Hi Landscape Architect,

You could embed your project name and number in fields to achieve the
desired result. No vba required. For example:
{IF{DATE \@yyyyMMdd}> {20061118} "project name" "project name"}
where the first instance of "project name" is formatted in the red font. Use
the same technique for the project number, or even put both the name and
number in the one field - it's up to you.

The field coding works by comparing today's date in ISO format against the
target date (two days before the due date), also in ISO format.

Cheers
PS: the field braces (i.e. '{ }') are created in pairs via Ctrl-F9 - you
can't use normal braces for this.

 

[Jay Freedman]

I had been thinking of a macro solution, but macropod's answer using
fields is simpler to set up.

It would also be quite easy to set this up in Excel. Select the column
that contains the due dates. Click Format > Conditional Formatting.
Set the three boxes in the condition dialog to

Cell value is less than or equal to =TODAY()+2

Click the Format button and select the red color. Any date that is one
or two days later than the current date will automatically be
formatted in red. I'm not familiar enough with Excel to know whether
you can also format the project number in the same row, but I suspect
that can be done too.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Landscape Architect]

Once again, thank you for your prompt responses. It has been very helpful

-Landscape Architect-