Hello all. I am pretty inexperienced when it comes to Excel, I have a basic understanding of how it works, but I don't know how to set it up. My question is this; my wife runs a daycare in our home and she is limited by the state how many children she can care for according to their ages. She can have two children under the age of two and up to eight children over two.

Where I would like to help her out is by implementing an excel spreadsheet to help her determine the ages of the kids that she currently has and will also be able to forecast specific dates into the future what the ages of the children will be. She gets phone calls daily from parents who are expecting at a later date and/or looking to change childcare's in the future. Every time she gets a phone call like this she takes about three notebook pages and makes basically an excel spreadsheet of the kids that she cares for to help her understand what days/ages work for new children. I would like to build an automated spreadsheet so that it organizes the days of the week across the top, and the columns will get filled with the children that she cares for for that day, and have it all based around the current or a future date. I would like the children's names to be highlighted in red if the child is under 2 and if the child is over 2 it could be just a regular cell. If at all possible, this would automatically update depending on what date the spreadsheet is representing. There would be a way to enter their birthdays and the spreadsheet would automatically determine the ages of the children and show how many children under 2 she has each day of the week. Not all children are present every day of the week. The spreadsheet would also have the capability of forecasting dates in the future and accurately show the ages of the children at that time.

I would hope that there is a way to do this, but I am unsure. It almost seems like more of a program than a spreadsheet, but with what I do know about Excel, it seems like it is possible. I want to thank anybody that gives me insight in advance and I greatly appreciate any help that I can get.

I look forward to learning more about the functionality of Excel and utilize it in new and benificial ways.

Thank you,

Nakinaw