How to search a spreadsheet for a name?

Okay. I appreciate the spirited discussion here, but let's all try to remain friends.... 🙂

First of all, let me re-iterate that I am a spreadsheet newbie. I might be able to utilize a function to create a formula after enough hair-pulling, but I am not necessarily skilled or intelligent enough to automatically see implications when suggested to me if they are not obvious. For instance, I can't figure out how to use FIND as suggested by 'dbk'.

On the other hand, I need to more fully explain what I would like to do so you guys that know what you are doing can either show me how it might be done, or tell me that it can't.

So, here it is:
I am an art professor and one of the coordinators for the Art Department at a local university (so I'm an artist, not a programmer...bad news to begin with). As a coordinator, I have to set up semester schedules for all of the teachers in my area in the department. I have been doing that with a spreadsheet (rather than paper and pencil). Each teacher has at least three classes that they teach at different hours throughout the week (usually Monday-Wednesday-Friday & Tuesday-Thursday), in different classrooms.

What I have been doing is to enter the teachers' names, classes, and hours (durations) into a spreadsheet associated with the different classrooms. I have made each classroom a different table so I can keep them differentiated. The problem comes in keeping track of where each teacher is teaching and at what time and in what classroom so that there are no overlaps or conflicts.

Added to this is that there are three other coordinators that are also scheduling for their classes. Everything is entered into a master chart, a physical matrix (a big sheet of paper with all of the above data colored onto it). The resulting juggling act is a nightmare of making certain that rooms, times, and teachers are properly allocated. After everything is assigned, there is always a frantic re-juggling when conflicts are (inevitably) uncovered.

I was hoping that there would be a way to automate at least SOME of this process. I mean, computers are supposed to be tools for making our lives easier, right?

So, in a nut-shell, what I want to be able to do is to create a spreadsheet into which I can enter the name of an instructor into a time slot for a particular classroom and be alerted if that time slot is already taken by some other class, or the teacher already has another time commitment at that hour in a different classroom. See what a tangled web I weave?

The reason I didn't explain all of this to begin with was that I suspected no-one would read such a lengthy post and bother to respond.

Regards,
Bob

Wow, I can't believe you went to all that work for me, Yvan. Merci bien. Vous etes vraiment formidable! I will try this out as soon as I can and will post here as to how it worked for me.

A bientot,
Bob

Thanks for your response, Yvan. I'm sorry to hear that you don't think what I want to do can be done in Numbers. Seems like there should be a way to search a sheet for a name....

Bob

Thanks, dbk, for that clarification. My problem was that I was trying to apply your suggestions to the FIND function, not the 'Find' command.... Oops....

Bob