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Showing posts with label Excel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Excel. Show all posts

Monday

NCAA 2026 Excel bracket and pool manager files

The 2026 Men's and Women's NCAA Tournament Bracket and Pool Manager files are now available on the brackets page.

Please contact me with any bugs you find and I'll try to fix them (i.e., testing in production).


Image source: david.dames, CC license
college,postseason,Excel,march madness,ncaa,bracket,tournament,Basketball,

NCAA 2025 Excel bracket and pool manager files

The 2025 Men's and Women's NCAA Tournament Bracket and Pool Manager files are now available on the brackets page.

Please contact me with any bugs you find and I'll try to fix them (i.e., testing in production).


Image source: david.dames, CC license

Sunday

NCAA 2024 Excel bracket and pool manager files

The 2024 Men's and Women's NCAA Tournament Bracket and Pool Manager files are now available on the brackets page.

Please contact me with any bugs you find and I'll try to fix them (i.e., testing in production).


Image source: david.dames, CC license

NCAA 2023 Excel bracket and pool manager files

The 2023 Men's and Women's NCAA Tournament Bracket and Pool Manager files are now available on the brackets page.

No enhancements this year. But, some fans of the files have started doing their own tinkering, so maybe I'll be able to integrate their efforts into a future year's files.

Please contact me with any bugs you find and I'll try to fix them (i.e., testing in production).


Image source: david.dames, CC license

NCAA 2022 Excel bracket and pool manager files

The 2022 Men's and Women's NCAA Tournament Bracket and Pool Manager files are now available on the brackets page.

No enhancements this year. But, some fans of the files have started doing their own tinkering, so maybe I'll be able to integrate their efforts into a future year's files. Too bad GitHub doesn't work for Excel files or the collaborative development process would be a lot easier.

Please contact me with any bugs you find and I'll try to fix them (i.e., testing in production).


Image source: david.dames, CC license

NCAA 2021 Excel bracket and pool manager files

The 2021 Men's NCAA Tournament Bracket and Pool Manager files are now available on the brackets page. The women's bracket will be available after the selection show for the women's tournament.

Only enhancement is cleaning up the Leaderboard HTML file a little bit. I realized that I wrote that code while CSS 3 was still in draft form, so I gave it a slight readability update this year. It's still not good, but it's ever-so-slightly better.

Please contact me with any bugs you find and I'll try to fix them (i.e., testing in production).


Image source: david.dames, CC license

NCAA 2019 Excel bracket and pool manager files

The 2019 NCAA Tournament Bracket and Pool Manager files are now available on the brackets page.

For pool managers, will you please post a comment here answering these questions? It would help with my future development.
1) What is the oldest version of Excel used by any of your participants? More importantly, does anyone use a version of Excel older than 2007?
2) Does anyone still use the v7 pool manager and brackets?




Image courtesy of david.dames under a Creative Commons license

NCAA 2018 Excel bracket and pool manager files

The 2018 NCAA Tournament Bracket and Pool Manager files are now available on the brackets page. Only one change from last year -- participants no longer need to get the 'play-in' game correct. They just choose that team combo to advance (e.g., ASU/Syracuse) and will get the points if ASU or Syracuse knocks off TCU.

Favor: Please take this 5-10 minute survey on rivalry in men's DI basketball, and ask others (e.g., people in your pool) to do so as well. My day job is a sport management professor and my research area is in sport rivalry, so gathering more opinions would be valuable; you can see more about the research at knowrivalry.com.


Image courtesy of david.dames under a Creative Commons license

Monday

NCAA 2017 Excel bracket and pool manager files

The 2017 NCAA Tournament Bracket and Pool Manager files are now available on the brackets page. No new functionality from last year, but at least the new teams are loaded. I promise - once my kids are older and I have tenure [got the tenure letter last week! So that bodes well for future improvements], I'll make the long-awaited improvements. In the meantime, enjoy March Madness!

Favor: Please take this 5-10 minute survey on rivalry in men's DI basketball, and ask others (e.g., people in your pool) to do so as well. My day job is a sport management professor and my research area is in sport rivalry, so gathering more opinions would be valuable; you can see more about the research at knowrivalry.com.


Image courtesy of david.dames under a Creative Commons license

Sunday

NCAA 2016 Excel bracket and pool manager files

The 2016 NCAA Tournament Bracket and Pool Manager files are now available on the brackets page. Only a little bit of new functionality from last year (Final Four teams visible on leaderboard), but at least the new teams are loaded. I promise - once my kids are older and I have tenure, I'll make the long-awaited improvements. In the meantime, enjoy March Madness!

Favor: Please take this 5-10 minute survey on rivalry in men's DI basketball, and ask others (e.g., people in your pool) to do so as well. My day job is a sport management professor and my research area is in sport rivalry, so gathering more opinions would be valuable; you can see more about the research at knowrivalry.com.


Image courtesy of david.dames under a Creative Commons license

Monday

NCAA 2015 Excel bracket and pool manager files

The 2015 NCAA Tournament Bracket and Pool Manager files are now available on the brackets page. No new functionality changes from last year, but at least the new teams are loaded. I promise - once my kids are old enough for school and I have tenure, I'll make the long-awaited improvements. In the meantime, enjoy March Madness!

Favor: Please take this 5-10 minute survey on rivalry in men's DI basketball, and ask others (e.g., people in your pool) to do so as well. My day job is a sport management professor and my research area is in sport rivalry, so gathering more opinions would be valuable; you can see more about the research at knowrivalry.com.


Image courtesy of david.dames under a Creative Commons license

Thursday

New NCAA Basketball Pool Manager file

Thanks to everyone who is using the Excel bracket Pool Manager file. I hope you're enjoying the tournament so far (and you didn't have Georgetown or Gonzaga going too far).

I made some updates to the Pool Manager file that put back in some of the functionality that had been lost when the field expanded to 68 teams. Specifically, I added columns to the leaderboard to show Max Points, and who each participant had in the Final Four, Championship Game, and as the National Champion. As teams lose in the tourney, those team names will automatically be crossed out and the max points will update accordingly.

If you'd like to use the latest version, you can download it from the brackets page, or just click here to download.

Once you download this version (9-0-0), you'll need to re-import your participants' brackets and again update the MasterBracket tab. There has been limited testing on this version, so please let me know if you come across any errors.

I hope you continue to get good use out of the brackets, and thanks for all the feedback and suggestions for improvements.

Note: if you are using the old version (v7), your brackets won't import. This only works for the new version. I'm planning on retiring v7 once I get all the functionality migrated to the new version.

NCAA 2013 Women's basketball tournament bracket

The Excel brackets for the 2013 NCAA Women's Tournament are now available on the brackets page. Thanks to user Steve, who populated the teams.


Image courtesy of david.dames under a Creative Commons license

Sunday

NCAA 2013 Excel bracket and pool manager files

The 2013 NCAA Tournament Bracket and Pool Manager files are now available on the brackets page. No new enhancements over last year, but at least the new teams are loaded. Enjoy March Madness!




Image courtesy of david.dames under a Creative Commons license

Excel basketball brackets for 2011

The new March Madness Excel bracket and pool manager file are available for download! Click on the "Brackets" tab above, or go to http://whistleblows.com/brackets/

New this year: In addition to supporting the expanded NCAA field of 68 teams (it actually supports 128), the Excel bracket file includes the option of showing the date, time, and television channel for the round of 64 games. The dates are available for other rounds, but the TV broadcasts will not be announced until the tournament is underway.

The pool manager file is missing some of the features of past years. Those features will be back, but not until the 2012 edition. Sorry, just ran out of time.

I hope you all enjoy the brackets! Please share your thoughts, and any bugs you find or enhancements you'd like to see, on the Brackets page.

Update: If you want all the functionality from last year's bracket and don't mind not being able to pick the First Four games, you can download last year's pool manager file and bracket (already with 2011 teams). They must be used with each other (i.e., you cannot use this year's bracket with last year's pool manager file).

Thursday

March madness TV schedule

The TV schedule for the 2011 Men's NCAA basketball tournament was announced today. For the first time, every game, in its entirety, will be available nationally on CBS or basic cable. This is great news for basketball fans. Also great news for cord cutters like me: games will still be available on March Madness on Demand.

Click to download a March Madness television schedule in Excel. It's nothing pretty, but I threw it together today while home with my sick daughter (and her sitting on my lap for the whole time). I'll probably make it better once the actual games are announced.

Saturday

New NCAA bracket - what to do?

The NCAA men's basketball tournament will include 68 teams this year.  The "First Four" games will be played on Tue and Wed (Mar 15-16), then the "second round" starts on the traditional Thursday (Mar 17).

What do you think I should do about the 68 teams in terms of the Excel bracket?  I was thinking to leave it as is (just 64 with placeholders), since most people's pools won't start until Thursday anyway.  But those first four games are likely going to be toss-ups (bubble teams vs. "weaker" conference champions) and generate interest among fans.  The "right" thing for me to do is to create the bracket with 68 teams and build a way for people to select 64 or 68 team brackets on their own, but that's a lot of work to build in the dual flexibility.  That said, I want this to continue to be useful and accurately represent the competition.

What should I do?  How are you going to do your pool/brackets?  Vote below, and put your thoughts in the comments section.

By the way, when the brackets are available, I'll put them on a separate tab on this blog at the following link:
http://whistleblows.com/brackets/

[polldaddy poll=4468978]

Sunday

Building the Excel basketball bracket

The NCAA March Madness bracket and Basketball Pool Manager file in Excel were very popular this year (over 10000 downloads, which isn't bad considering I haven't attempted any publicizing or SEO), and Nick at Excel Spreadsheets Help asked me to write a guest post about the brackets. I've reprinted the post below with some additional babbling, or you click here to read the original.

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The process of administering an NCAA basketball pool can be tedious and fraught with human error. To alleviate this, we can use a two-file Excel solution: a Bracket file submitted by all pool participants, and a Pool Manager file used to track the results once the tournament has begun.

Below is a basic overview, but I recommend poking around the files to learn more. Please bear in mind that the bracket files aren't perfect, and there are better ways that I've often been too lazy to implement. The building of these was a long, very incremental process. I built the first bracket in 2002 and usually only worked on the files for a day or two each March, implementing minor changes each year. It's certainly not the best way to build a program, and it's far too typical of how products are developed. Still, the current files serve their purpose and I hope they can be of interest.

The Brackets

Most importantly: we need good, clean data. Let's say there is a game involving Massachusetts. If the participant puts the winner as "UMass," a human with context knowledge understands what that means, but Excel doesn't. The file needs to have "Massachusetts" exactly.

To keep data consistent, all participants must submit the exact same bracket file. By using VBA code that allows the user to click on a cell to advance that team, there is no opportunity for mis-typing. The user clicks on "Massachusetts" in cell B4 and it automatically advances the cell's contents ("Massachusetts") to cell C5. The user sees this as a quick and easy way to fill out a bracket; in reality, its main purpose was to help ensure good data.

For users who don't/can't enable macros, the file also uses a combination of Data Validation, formulas, and Conditional Formatting to ensure clean data. Having alternative checks is an important component to maintaining clean data. Many thanks to my friend Tom Szarek for the clever design of these great VBA-free features.

Collecting the brackets

With everyone using the same bracket file, we always know what data is going to be in which cells - e.g., C5 will always have the winner of the upper-left region's 1-16 matchup. This allows the Pool Manager file's VBA code to open a participant's bracket (previously saved off to the pool administrator's hard drive), store the picks in an array, and then write those picks at a row of data in the Pool Manager file. This is automatically repeated for all participants, storing all pool participant data on the same worksheet. At this point, the Bracket files are no longer of any use.

Evaluating the brackets

Using formulas, we compare the actual winners of the games (from the MasterBracket tab) with the participant's picks. If 'actual winner' on MasterBracket = the 'pick' on the Picks tab, the participant earns the points from that game. For example, if the pool manager designates "Massachusetts" as the winner in cell C5 on the MasterBracket tab, the formulas will check the participant data in column B of the Picks tab for a match. It does the same for the remaining games, the results of which are in Picks!C:C, Picks!D:D, etc.

The participant score is computed instantly with formulas on the Leaders tab. VBA then sorts the leaderboard in descending order so the highest scorer is on top. The resorting could be done with some array formulas, similar to those used on the PartInfo tab, but VBA is easier and less resource intensive.

Enjoy March!

Any time you are doing the same task multiple times, you need to question how Excel and VBA can be used to reduce the workload. With these files, pool administrators can handle a large number of participants with little additional effort. Further, once the Pool Manager file has all data, the administrator can send the file to all pool participants -- this lets participants track scores on their own, generate scenarios, and see other pool participants' picks. The less time spent on administration, the more time there is to enjoy the games and the taunting of friends in the pool.

Monday

NCAA Basketball March Madness Excel Brackets

Please see the new, permanent brackets page at
http://whistleblows.com/brackets/
All new updates will be put on that page. You can also click the "Brackets" link in the page header.


If you are managing a basketball pool of NCAA brackets, or you know someone who is, please feel free to download the NCAA Basketball Pool Manager file. This is used in conjunction with the basketball bracket file to automatically tabulate results, highlight winners in brackets, and cross out losing games. It allows scenario generation and modifying of point totals for each round (since each person prefers his/her own point total weighting, it allows for some customization).

Please feel free to share these files, but I ask that you reference this site when you do so. Also, these files are intended for not-for-profit use.

Note:The files are already populated with the 2010 NCAA tournament field, but I did not make any programming enhancements over last year's version.

March Madness Excel Bracket


Click here to download the basketball bracket. When prompted, choose to save this file to your computer (the desktop is fine). Microsoft Excel is needed in order to use this program. It works best when macros are enabled (see below for info on macros). If you cannot use macros (because of security settings or personal preference), you will not be able to one-click to advance teams, but the bracket is still very easy to complete. Many thanks to Tom Szarek for developing the macroless capabilities.

You will find instructions on the first tab for filling out the bracket (it just involves clicking). The basketball bracket is on the second tab. Once done, save the file and submit it to your pool manager.

Basketball Pool Manager File


This requires Microsoft Excel and macros must be enabled. See below for info on macros.

Click here to download the NCAA basketball bracket pool manager file. This is free code. Please share with others, make your own improvements, or offer suggestions for future upgrades. Please let me know how the program has worked for you - I'd love to hear your stories.

Note: This has been extensively tested using Excel 2002 (part of MS Office XP) and Excel 2007 on Windows XP and Vista platforms. You may see errors if you use this file on a different Excel/Windows version or on a Macintosh computer, but these should not cause any damage to your computer. Please feel free to alert me about any bugs; if they're easy to fix, I'll make the changes and post a new version of the file.

Enjoy!


I hope that you enjoy watching the tournament and that these Excel basketball bracket files somehow contribute to your fun. ~B. David Tyler

While I understand that some people choose to gamble on the NCAA tournament results, the effort is not meant to either endorse or enable gambling. I share this as a way for you to brag to peers about your superior basketball clairvoyance. Please note that this is not supported by or in any way connected to the NCAA.


Macros


How to do I enable macros to use the Bracket file?
Excel 97-2003
When opening the document, select ENABLE MACROS when prompted to do so. If you are not prompted, check your security settings under: Tools... Options... Security... Macro Security... [set your level to "Medium", then click OK twice]. Once this is done, close Excel completely and reopen the document.

Excel 2007
After the document opens, click on the "Options…" box at the top of the screen. In the following window, click "Enable this content" and then "Ok".

What is a macro?
When talking about Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, etc), a macro is a piece of hand-generated code that adds functionality to the software application; the code is written in the "Visual Basic for Applications" language and is part of the Excel file. In the case of the bracket, I wrote code to automatically advance teams through the bracket when you click on the team names; this is not something that Excel does normally, but through macros I could tell Excel exactly what I want to happen.

What is the exact macro code in the bracket file?
Good for you to ask. Open the Excel document and press Alt-F11. This will open up the Visual Basic editor, and by clicking on sheet and module names on the left side of the screen you will be able to view all code.