Any way to tag a cell containing a date value as complete?

[JKuzia]

I may be reaching for the sky here, since I have found nothing when searching online for an answer. I am using excel as a dashboard for multiple (hundreds) of projects to report progress. I can format the dates that are late, early or on time using a comparison between a baseline worksheet and a current worksheet. However, when a task is completed, I would like the cell to be highlighted in green, but to retain the date value (in both sheets). In the past, I have used a third worksheet to hold all of the individual dates and a "Completed" or "In progress" (basically yes or no) status. However, there are 50 dates per project and over 500 projects now, so this manual method is becoming quite cumbersome. I wondered if there was anything I was overlooking to allow a user to tag each cell as either "yes" or "no" to allow for formatting without over-writing the date value in that cell?

 

[RickXL]

The usual way would be for each activity to have a record of its own and a set of statuses that could be selected.

However, if you just want the cell on the dashboard to go green why not get the users to change the fill colour of the cell to green?

 

[JKuzia]

I had been using the usual way, but since there are 62 records per row, each requiring a record and over 600 projects, the data was getting cumbersome. I was hoping there was a method to reduce size. The users themselves do not update the dashboard, they maintain an individual tab that populates a data sheet for compilation. And with ten users, there is always non-conformance to color coding, updating, etc. But if there is not another method, then I will make do. Thanks for the response!