How to create a staff roster....how far can I go

Hello everyone,

I have been using excel for a few years, but I am creating everything manually. My knowledge of automation in excel is very limited, so please forgive me if these are stupid questions.

Basically I need to create a roster for a set number of staff for two 6 month periods, winter and summer.

The top row has the month, next the day and below is the date. I need the roster to cover the full 6 months.

Column a has the names.

Before I have been typing in all of the dates, but can I create a spreadsheet that can create the table, with me entering the start date, and everything else fills in?

Every staff member works 5 days on, 3 days off all year. Can I use solver to show the best pattern to put the staff on to have the best average of staff available to work each day?

I use 1 for a work day and F for a day off.

Can excel automatically create the spreadsheet?

My laptop is sick at the moment, but it should be able to link my current spreadsheet so you can see what I am trying to do.

Many thanks, and sorry if this has been discussed to death already.

Hi
creating the table is very easy

can I suggest you only use one row for your date information, it may make life easier

you can apply a custom format to the date to display it the way you want, for example

"ddd dd mmm"

will display as "Wed 01 Jan"

if you put the start date into cell B1, you can either put the formula =1+B1 in cell C1 and copy across, or use excel's autoful handle to copy the formula into the adjacent cells

http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/ex...boutfillhandle

It should also be possible to devise the roster using excel, but could you provide a bit more information - how many staff do you have, how many need to be at work each day, are there different shifts, etc

Try this..

Hi

if your 5 days on, three days off pattern is fixed then I don't see a way of delivering the same number of employees each day. The two macros in the attached workbook will populate the grid area of your sheet with this pattern, however.

The cells in rows 2 and 3 show one possible way to return your day/date info using formulas that can easily be copied

Roster program.xls

Hi Folks

Please find attached my file.

You can see the details on each sheet that i want to achieve.

On the interface sheet i have a discription of all of my ideas.

If anyone can help i will be very gratefull.

Many thanks

Hello all
I have just decided to update to a later excel model, as mine is very old!

So once I update this and create my spreadsheet, I will re post again and upload the file.

I have been doing a lot of research, and I think I know exactly what I am looking for.

Many thanks for your posts and help.

I will be back soon.

Cheers