Excel Functions that measure the size and color of a cell?
 

I'm working for a public access television station (Access SF in San
Francisco). We are trying to create a dynamic schedule using excel (since
Outlook does not contain the functionality we need). The key feature we are
looking for is the ability to create reports/formulas that will tell us how
many hours of a program (or program type) have aired in a given time period.
That is to say, we'd like to be able to ask "How many hours has the program
"Funtime with Chuck and Amy" been on this week/month/quarter/year?", and be
able to get a quick answer without paging back through the calendar and
adding up all the hours that the program was on.

I've created a decent looking weekly schedule using excel, but adding up the
hours of programming is ugly at best. I've created a new column that holds
the hours for each show, but what I'd really like to do is have excel count
this automatically (i.e. if a cell is a merger of 6 cells, it will
automatically be entered as a 3 hour program (since each cell is a half-hour).

In addition, I'd like to be able to color-code the programs by type, and
then be able so, say add up all of the hours of "red" programming in a given
week, day, or month with a single function.

This may simply be beyond the bounds of excel's capabilities (and I am
looking into scheduling software with this capability), but if anyone has
seen something like this done, I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks!

Chris

Excel Functions that measure the size and color of a cell?
 

The function belowwill return color values, but it doesn't autmatically
change when the color of the reference box changes. To get the number of
cells you can use

=ROWS(D2:E5)*COLUMNS(D2:E5)

Function GetColorValue(MyRange As Range)
'
' GetColorValue Macro
'
'
GetColorValue = MyRange.Interior.ColorIndex


End Function

"cferejohn" wrote:

I'm working for a public access television station (Access SF in San
Francisco). We are trying to create a dynamic schedule using excel (since
Outlook does not contain the functionality we need). The key feature we are
looking for is the ability to create reports/formulas that will tell us how
many hours of a program (or program type) have aired in a given time period.
That is to say, we'd like to be able to ask "How many hours has the program
"Funtime with Chuck and Amy" been on this week/month/quarter/year?", and be
able to get a quick answer without paging back through the calendar and
adding up all the hours that the program was on.

I've created a decent looking weekly schedule using excel, but adding up the
hours of programming is ugly at best. I've created a new column that holds
the hours for each show, but what I'd really like to do is have excel count
this automatically (i.e. if a cell is a merger of 6 cells, it will
automatically be entered as a 3 hour program (since each cell is a half-hour).

In addition, I'd like to be able to color-code the programs by type, and
then be able so, say add up all of the hours of "red" programming in a given
week, day, or month with a single function.

This may simply be beyond the bounds of excel's capabilities (and I am
looking into scheduling software with this capability), but if anyone has
seen something like this done, I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks!

Chris