putting time alerts in MS Excel

[Citizen K]

How do I compile a table in MS Excel with a timeline?
I work on a farm where we produce and export pineapples. Such pineapple cultivation needs utmost accuracy. I have now been asked to design and implement a table which will capture all activities on each plot comprehensively with dates given to each activity. I want to develop a table which will automatically highlight activities as "pending", "completed" and "undone" for which I will use different colors. The challenge i have is that I need Excel to automatically highlight the fields at given times in order for jobs to be carried out on time.
How can I do this, and is Excel even the program to use?

[soybean]

This might be helpful: 15 Useful Excel Templates for Project Management & Tracking.  For more references: http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=using+excel+for+project+management&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest

You might find a template that can be applied to your needs without a lot of modification.  Even if it needs modification, it might be much easier than building something from scratch.

[jaydeee]

excel date functions will help you deal with it then you will finally need to learn conditional formatting to change the coloring and other cell properties.