Monday, March 18, 2013

2013 NIT Bracket Spreadsheet

2013 NIT Bracket
 
If you’re an avid NCAA men’s basketball fan and March Madness isn’t enough for you than you can also download the 2013 NIT Tournament Bracket. The National Invitation Tournament is comprised of many of the teams that some argue should have been in the NCAA tournament field but got left out. You would think all of these teams would be really bad when in reality some automatic bids to the NCAA tourney go to really bad teams (twenty loss Liberty, for example) thus teams like Kentucky, Iowa, Ohio University, are forced out of the field of 68 and into the NIT. This is still a good thing for these teams because they get the extra practices with come with the postseason while the other teams are sitting at home until next year.

This bracket is pretty straight forward. I’ve included the dates, times, and TV coverage for each game. However, there is no Pool Manager for the NIT spreadsheets (have you ever heard of anyone running an NIT pool anyways?).

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Downloadable 2013 NCAA Tournament Bracket

The downloadable 2013 NCAA Tournament Brackets are here! It's finally time to download and print your 2013 March Madness Brackets. I’ve made my own tournament brackets for almost every other major sporting event (see them all in the downloads page) but I’ve never attempted to make my own March Madness brackets. Why? Because for the last several years I've used David Tyler's spreadsheets, which I consider to be the best NCAA Excel brackets out there and are nearly flawless in my opinion. They're free to download too!

downloadable 2013 ncaa tournament bracket

David has created two separate files: the actual tournament brackets where you predict the winners of each game and a separate bracket manager for office pools. You must use his brackets in order to use the pool manager (and make sure macros are enabled).
2013 march madness pool manager
Download the 2013 NCAA Tournament Bracket.
Download the 2013 March Madness Pool Manager

Instructions are included with the spreadsheets. To learn more about how the brackets are created read our interviews with David from 2010 and 2011. Also, be sure to visit David’s website, When the Whistle Blows.

My Buckeyes won the Big Ten Tournament and are one of the hottest teams in the nation right now. Who do you have winning the big dance? Let us know in the comments below!

If you would like to you can join my basketball pool on Yahoo's Tourney Pick'em.
 

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

How to create collapsible rows in Excel


how to group rows in excel
I was recently creating an Excel spreadsheet template for a friend and I needed to know how to create collapsible rows in Excel. I had a worksheet that listed student’s names and information. My friend wanted a +/- sign at the beginning of each row representing different groups of students that could be clicked to reveal grades for various classes. The Group function in Excel presented the perfect solution to this situation.

One method often used to collapse rows or columns in Excel is by using the Group function.

Go to the Data tab, select the rows or columns you want to group, then select the Group icon (located in the Outline are). This will result in a button being placed to the left of the row number column and allow you to instantly collapse or hide the grouped rows. To ungroup the rows simply hit the Ungroup button (also in the Outline area).

You can use keyboard shortcuts to improve your speed and efficiency when applying this method. First, select the Row or Column range, then;

To group:
<Shift> <Alt> <RightArrow>

To ungroup:
<Shift> <Alt> <LeftArrow>

To retain the Groups, but toggle hide/unhide the symbols:
<Ctrl> <8>
(Using the "8" that's under the function keys, *not* from the num keypad.)

Another option to group rows would be to apply Subtotals to your range.  You'll get those outlining symbols and even a subtotal row between each group. The Subtotals button is also in the Outline section of the Data tab.

I’ve created a short how to video to show you exactly how to collapse rows in Excel. Check it out below:

 

So that’s how you expand or collapse a group of cells in Excel. Pretty easy, huh?

-Nick

Easily Grouping Columns and Rows in Excel

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Printable Big Ten Tournament Bracket 2013

big ten tournament bracket 2013
I’ve never done this before but being a big fan of the Big Ten I’ve decided to create a printable Big Ten Tournament Bracket this year. The men’s basketball tournament begins on Thursday, March 14th in the heart of Big 10 country at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois. The cool thing about this editable Excel bracket is it includes the complete Big Ten basketball tournament schedule including all of the game times and television channels. Currently, I only have seedings listed. I will list the actual teams once they are known and then update the spreadsheet on Sunday.
 


Download the all in one bracket and Big Ten Tourney schedule here.

I can’t wait until the Big Ten Tournament starts! There are so many questions to answer: Will Michigan have an early exit? Is Indiana fading? What Minnesota team will show up? Can Iowa or Illinois spring an upset? How far can Ohio State go? With the way each of the top five teams have dropped random games they should have won this year I’d argue there is no clear favorite to win the Big Ten Basketball Championship. What do you think? I’d love for you to share your thoughts on the Big 10 tournament!


Check back soon for the 2013 March Madness brackets and download our new Excel Spreadsheets Help Android app!

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Macro to Export Hyperlinks from Excel to Word


In this tutorial I am going to show you how to write a VBA macro to export hyperlinks from Excel to Word. I’m all about automation and efficiency and this is another real world example. I used this macro to quickly create a table of the world’s observation wheels for my latest website.

What you will learn by reading through this tutorial:

  • How to create a VBA macro to send data from Excel to Word
  • How to export hyperlinks from Excel
  • How to find the last row of data in an Excel sheet using a macro
  • How to paste hyperlink into Word using a macro
  • How to make a webpage from an Excel file

To begin, we have an Excel sheet with names in column A, some of them are hyperlinks to webpages and some of them are not. Hit Alt + F8 and create a new macro, I named mined Tables. It’s time to begin coding.
 
export hyperlinks from excel to word

 

The first thing we need to do is create a new instance of Microsoft Word and make it visible:

 

Dim appWD As Word.Application

Set appWD = CreateObject("Word.Application")

appWD.Visible = True

 

Next, let’s find the last row that contains data within our active Excel spreadsheet (my sheet is called “Data”):

 

Sheets("Data").Select

            Dim FinalRow As Integer

 

            FinalRow = Range("A9999").End(xlUp).Row

 

Now we add some error handling - if there is no data then quit the program, otherwise continue on:

If FinalRow = 0 Then

            Exit Sub

 

            Else

 

As a check, I like to have a message box pop-up displaying the total number of rows with data:

 

            MsgBox "Number of rows is " & FinalRow

 

Now it’s time to tell Word to create a new document. We’ll also add our header text by using TypeText. TypeParagraph inserts a new paragraph by going to the next line:

 

            appWD.Documents.Add

            appWD.Selection.TypeParagraph

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeText Text:="[table caption= List of Observation Wheels]"

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeParagraph

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeText Text:="Name,Height(m)"

Next, we’ll create a For...Next loop to cycle through every row and look to see if there is a hyperlink in column A. If there is a hyperlink, we want to copy it, if not then we still want to copy any text in the cell.

 

Dim hyperlink1 As String

Dim i As Integer

 

            For i = 2 To FinalRow

 

            If Range("A" & i).Hyperlinks.Count > 0 Then

 
 

            'if there is a hyperlink

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeParagraph

 

            hyperlink1 = Range("A" & i).Hyperlinks(1).Address

 

            appWD.ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=appWD.Selection.Range,          Address:=hyperlink1, SubAddress:="", ScreenTip:="", TextToDisplay:=Range("A" & i)

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeText Text:="," & Range("B" & i)

 
 

            Else

 
 

            'If no hyperlink

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeParagraph

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeText Text:=Range("A" & i) & "," & Range("B" & i)

 
 

            End If

 

            Next 'i

 

Finally, we can add any text at the bottom of the document and close the if and sub statements.

 

            'end the table

            appWD.Selection.TypeParagraph

            appWD.Selection.TypeText Text:="[/table]"

            End If

            End Sub

create webpage from excel with macro
 

You may have noticed I began and ended with [table] and [/table]. I installed a Wordpress plugin on my website that enables me to easily insert sortable tables into my webpage without any major html coding involved. So now I can run my macro on my spreadsheet, copy the result it spits out into Word, and paste the text into my website. Here is the end result, a sortable table of all large observation wheels found throughout the world! Pretty cool huh?

Friday, March 1, 2013

Download the Apartment Comparison Android App

apartment comparison
To the fans of my wildly popular Apartment Search Spreadsheet, I just wanted to quickly let you know I’ve just released a brand new Android application called Apartment Comparison. It’s very similar to the spreadsheet but now in an easy to use format for mobile phones and tablets.The application is easy to use and comes with instructions.

The intended use of the app is to compare apartments by giving an apartment score to each. The score is computed when the user sets the importance of several key categories, such as location, community, utilities, etc. A bubble chart is then displayed for you to compare apartment score to monthly cost. The apartment with the highest cost might also cost twice as much as any other apartment, so maybe it is better to choose the second highest score because the cost is much less.

This apartment app can also be used as a simple apartments search checklist. There are 65 input fields divided up into seven different categories. To compare apartments you must first enter information for each apartment using the input screen. Data is entered in one of three forms: numerical keypad (for monthly expenses, move-in fees, etc.), Yes/No buttons (for things like if a microwave if present or not), or a rating from 1 to 10 (for things like your evaluation of the local school district).  I strongly believe we have literally thought of anything and everything you could wish to know about an apartment! 


I aim to make Apartment Comparison the best apartment hunting app available so if you do download it I would appreciate it if you rated the application and gave me any feedback or suggestions for improvements.
apartment comparison app