Holiday Dinner Planner in Excel

This Holiday Dinner Planner lets you select a time to eat dinner, and helps you organize all the steps in preparing the dinner.

You'll enter all the items that you plan to serve, such as turkey, potatoes, and dinner rolls. You'll also enter the preparation steps required for each food item, and the time that each step will take.

Then, sort the list, and Excel will create a timetable that you can follow while you get dinner ready. At the end of this article you can download my sample file, and it will help you create your own dinner planner.

The first step in using the Holiday Dinner Planner is to enter the time that you want to eat dinner. There is a drop down list of times at the top right of the planner.

Select a dinner time from the drop down list.

In the green cells on the Holiday Dinner Planner, you'll enter details about the food that you want to prepare. List all of the preparation steps, and the time required for each step.

For example, if you're serving a turkey, there might be 5 steps -- prepare the stuffing, stuff the turkey, cook the turkey, let it stand for a few minutes, and carve the turkey.

In the screen shot below, you can see the sample items entered in the Dinner Planner.

After you have entered all the food preparation items, you'll sort the list. This will put the items in order of their start times.

1. Click on cell B9, where the first Start Time is listed.
2. On the Ribbon in Excel 2007, click the Data tab
3. In the Sort & Filter group, click the Sort Smallest to Largest button.

Note: In Excel 2003, click the A-Z button on the toolbar.

In the Holiday Dinner Planner, columns I to N are hidden. They contain formulas that calculate the start time for each preparation step.

To see the hidden columns:

1. Click on the Select All button, to the left of the Column A heading. This will select all the cells on the worksheet.
2. Right-click on any column heading, and click on Unhide. This will show all the columns on the worksheet.

In the hidden columns, you can click on a cell to see its formula in the Formula Bar, at the top of the worksheet.

These formulas calculate the number of hours required for each step, the total hours required to prepare each item, and the start time for each step.

To help you get started, you can download the sample Holiday Dinner Planner on my website.

You might also like the sample Excel Christmas Planner that I created, to help you organize your Christmas shopping, tasks, budget and meal planning.

And for an easy way to make your mashed potatoes, check out my Slow Cooker Mashed Potatoes recipe.