Thanks everymonk for your very insightful replies! I now have a lot more knowledge about ways to go about my task.

My current thinking: I'd still like to use Excel as my wife is very comfortable using it, but I'm thinking now that I'll run a script off-line that will process the spreadsheet data and produce my nicely formatted HTML page, then automaticaaly upload it to the web server. That way I don't need to worry about the overhead/delay involved in processing the spreedsheet on the fly (if I went the CGI route).