Excel help please

slim1690

I run a darts league as a volunteer and send out the fixtures, results, league tables, contact details and statistic tables by email to all my league members in a spreadsheet. My problem is, due to being useless with Excel, I have to manually update every single page, taking a long time and often leading to errors. What I'd like is to just input the results, and have the league and stats tables update themselves automatically, I've seen spreadsheets than can do this, but I've got no idea how to do any of this. Anyone care to help me out or point me in the right direction?

Thanks

LucianH

You may be lucky and find someone on this forum that has one already. Otherwise, rather than start one from scratch I'd hunt around for something that already exists (possibly from a more focused forum). Some exampes are:

Darts Forum
Excel forum

If you can find one that nearly meets what you need, you can then come back here for possible tweaks.

If this does require a "start from scratch" approach, then we'll need a lot more information on "the requirement" - ie, what information is being stored for the stats, how do you want the stats and the league table presented etc. As I said, far less work to find something as a starting point.

By the way, if you're downloading excel that uses macros, make sure you don't "enable macros" when prompted by excel unless you're comfortable that they're coming from a reasonably trustworthy site.

martinthebandit

Ok I will have a go, although its years since I did anything with excel.

In the cell you want the copied information to end up type

= then the exact name of the spreadsheet your copying from, then an exclamation mark, followed by the cell reference.

If the sheet you are copying from is called sheet1 and you want the info from cell A1, your formula in the place you want the info copying and automatically updating in should look like

=sheet1!A1

Hope that makes sense

tyllwyd

If you run a darts league, I'd be willing to bet that some of the members are good with Excel - why don't you ask around to see if someone can help?

EchoLocation

I would say start from scratch as it'll be beneficial going forward for you to fully understand all the workings - although certainly have a look at some similar existing examples for ideas, though I'd say stay away from files using a VBA approach.

It shouldn't be a particularly complicated build depending on how detailed you need it, just make sure you plan it out properly first as it's very easy to let a spreadsheet get out of control if you're constantly changing layout and fuctions/fomulas as you go.

Also, don't be afraid to break it all down as well, so you don't have to pack too much into single formulas. It's always good to add extra working columns and rows to split calculations and results to help facilitate any changes you may need to make going forward.

Try to think about it all simply and logically, even if you don't immediately know who to implement it, as ultimately you will be able to achieve anything you can conceive.

In terms of formulas, it's not really a case of having to learn and understand them all as once you 'get' the logic of formulas and how they're structured you should be able to implement anything you need.

johnnyboyrebel

As said by EchoLocation, it is quite simple to understand if you look at it properly.

Lets assume you have 3 columns and you want the result to be in the 4th column and each week you update the first 3 columns, the formula in the column you want to update automatically would be something like =A1+B1+C1. this would go in the cell D1. So lets say A1, B1 & C1 currently had a number of '1' in each, D1 would therefore say '3'.

If you look at it again a week later and you want to change the '1''s to '3's then do this and D1 would automatically change to '9'.

Thats a very basic formula but from there you can add more to it (eg.=A1+B1+C1, CONCATENATE, 'darts') would mean D1 would then say '9darts'.

Th easiest way to learn is if you want to know how add 20% onto a value in excel for example, do a google search for 'add percentage excel formula'. Mastering google searches is the first thing everyone should do as anything (literally anything) is answered already on there.

I compare excel pretty much to web design, it looks all technical and gobbledygook however once you understand how something is laid out on a page and how an image is visible for example, its actually very simple.

EchoLocation

If you can describe how you currently present the results, or how you want to, in league and stat form, I'm sure we can offer some pointers.

slim1690

Thanks for the replies folks, I've uploaded my current league spreadsheet in full (except for the contact list page) here - http://wikisend.com/download/497946/currentleaguesheet.xlsx
As you'll see, the only formulae I actually use are the very simple ones to work out Pts and LD columns in the league tables, all the other details I enter myself.

The league format is described in the Format sheet, unlike other league table sheets I've seen before, I need it to only have one set of round robin fixtures, instead of "home and away" fixtures, and points are as follows:

2pts win
1pt draw
+1pt bonus for 8-0 win
-1pt deduction for 8-0 defeat

The tables also show the player's highest checkout and number of 180s - again I have to enter that manually.

rmg1

At a quick glance, you've left on everyone's phone number and email address. Might be worth removing those and re-uploading a copy of the file.

slim1690

rmg1 wrote: »

At a quick glance, you've left on everyone's phone number and email address. Might be worth removing those and re-uploading a copy of the file.

I've sorted that now - thanks - new link is here - http://wikisend.com/download/497946/currentleaguesheet.xlsx and have edited the original post...

EchoLocation

It might by a daft question but what do the F, A and LD columns consist of. Based on the formula it looks like a For and Against, but what are these values?

Also, can I assume that the max number of games someone could play is 12?