I work for a small packaging company in the maintenance
department. currently our work orders,machine maintenance and
preventative maintenance are logged by hand into one of six separate
three ring binders. Needles to say this can be quite cumboursome if
one needs to find specific information easily,quickly or accurately.
If possible I would like to develope a workbook in excel to track all
of this information as a searchable database. People here are
familiar with useing excel and extreemly resistant to change if it
envolves something completely new.

I can see the following titles and discriptions as they would be used
in the spread sheet.

A:WO# required information automaticaly generated in succession as
information is added to a line once saved this information cannot be
changed.

B:Origination date required information autogenerated from current
date once saved this information cannot be changed

C: originator not required information

D: short discription 50 char or less required information canno be
changed once saved

E: assigned to/ completed by not required for origination but
required when WO is closed once saved cannot be changed

F: Machine not required unless PM or sanitation only specific entrys
accepted from a dropdown list once saved cannot be changed

G: Type not required unless PM or sanitation only specific entrys
accepted from a dropdown list PM SAN REP PRO SAF SUP HSK once saved
cannot be changed

H: Due date not required if entered cannot be changed once saved more
than a week green less than a week more than three days orange less
than three days red.

I: close Y performs final save and removes row from alteration

J: Date closed auto generate when col I=Y

K: time not required (yet) to keep track of hours spent on WO

L: Comments open to alteration untill closed used to notify and
record progress.


It has been suggested that Access would be better suited for this but
I am sure that I would be left to my writers cramp and the six
binders already in use.

I realize that a conflict may occour if more than one user tries to
access the workbook at the same time if there is no other solution
than to create a workorder sheet and email all entrys to one person
for data entry a macro could be written to search the sheet and input
the information from each individualy or in sucsession couldn't it.

Is the above possible? potentialy unstable? I have one more twist
that would be useful. For the PM's and Sanitation schedule there are
Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Semianual and Anual. Would it be possible
to autogenerate these as one was closed establishing a heirarchy so
that at the end of the year only the anual and not one of each was
included in the list of work orders to be performed. The information
in the comments section would also autogenerate according to
requirements for that type of WO.