Project planning with Excel - special Hlookup required

Hi All!

Excel 2007: I have written a project plan in 2007, moving hours around so that we don't overstretch on hours per day OR per week.

Now, I want Excel to look up the date (column name) for every first value in the row (start date), and every last value in the row (end date) and write them next to each other at the beginning of the table.
The rows are very choppy, as tasks are stretched over a varying number of days, and don't necessarily follow each other (there may be a day's break, weekends, etc.)

I also want these dates at the beginning of the table to change, should I move the hours to another day. Is that possible?

Thanks for any help.

It would help if we knew the content of the cells being populated (ie numbers, text etc...)

If we assume numeric entries...

You can for ex. find first date using:

=INDEX($C$1:$IV$1,MATCH(TRUE,INDEX(ISNUMBER($C2:$IV2),0),0))

where C1:IV1 hold dates and C2:IV2 the possible entries

For the last date:

=LOOKUP(9.99E+307,$C2:$IV2,$C$1:$IV$1)


If in doubt - post a sample file