I stumbled on the following tutorial on a toy linear programming problem.
(If you don't use Stumble, you probably should, by the way).
This is optimizing an objective measure like profit, in face of constraints.
The tutorial had just enough mistakes to allow you to massage the toy
problem helpfully. I was impressed. Given the head of steam to
formulate problems in hundreds of variables and hundreds of constraints
I firmly believe (as do the authors) that one can easily code them using Excel
with just that tutorial.....