I've drawn up a fairly rudimentary project roadmap in excel, which includes project name, start date (quarter year) [column D], end date (quarter year) [column E] and then the timeline itself with green bars reflecting the duration of the project. Instead of simply colouring in the cells, I add a value of 's' and use conditional formatting to colour the cell. The formula I need is to match the start date (first S in cell range) and end date (last s in cell range) and enter that value into columns D and E. If it's easier, I can change the value for end of the cell range if it makes it easier, e.g. change the final S to an 'F' to indicate the finish date.