2013 College Bowl Pool Spreadsheet

The NCAA college football bowl season is here again which means it’s time to make your picks and predictions about who you think will win each game. One of the best times of the holiday season (other than giving and receiving gifts) is gathering around the TV and rooting for your alma mater or hometown football team.

Upgrades from last year’s college football bowl pool manager spreadsheet include:

• New easy method to make each bowl game worth a different point value
• New leaderboard tab and stats
• New entry sheet to pass out to participants/co-workers
• Manager copies and pastes participants picks into the bowl pool manager file (will be automated with a macro sometime soon)
• Complete NCAA college football bowl schedule with game times and TV station
• The bowl prediction sheets include the football helmet designs for every team, their win-loss record, and the logo for all 35 bowl games. I added the helmets so those players who aren't big college football fans can pick a winner based on their favorite helmet design!

The beauty of this football bowl manager is you will not have to change or modify any formulas yourself (unless you want to of course).  Instructions are included within the Excel file and shows you exactly how to manually add more players. But if you were wondering about the nuts and bolts, my spreadsheet uses the rank without ties formula:
=RANK(num, ref) + COUNTIF(range,num)-1

To download the college bowl pool spreadsheets simply click the link below which will take you to the box.com, where the file is hosted. Next, click on the “Download” link in the upper right hand corner. That’s it!


2013 College Football Bowl Pool Manager.xls download (updated 12-9)
2013 College Football Bowl Prediction Entry Form.xls download (updated 12-9)


Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, find any bugs, or have any suggestions for improvement. If you like this spreadsheet then check out our NCAA Helmet Schedule spreadsheet. What team are you rooting for?

2015 College Football Bowl Prediction Pool

Newborn Feeding Schedule Spreadsheet Template

I am happy to announce I am now a proud father! I'm never been so tired yet so happy in my entire life! While at the hospital we had to keep a Newborn Feeding and Diaper Log. As soon as we got home and the baby was napping I decided to recreate the log as a usable spreadsheet and have made it available to all you other new parents for free. Use the log to keep track of feeding and diaper changing times; whether it was breastfeeding or bottle; if it was just urine or stool plus any other notes and observations. Keeping track of your baby's feeding and changing schedule is a great way to make sure they are growing and thriving as they should be. Take the log to your doctor's office during checkups and you won't have to rack your brain to remember any of these details.

 

Newborn Feeding Schedule Template.xls download

I suggest printing it off and keeping a copy next to the changing table or rocking chair like I have. I just can’t wrap my head around how something so small creates so much poop! Thank goodness I signed up for Amazon Mom and setup a weekly diaper delivery at a discounted rate. Download my newborn checklist for new parents and other spreadsheets related to health, babies, parenting, and more.

Newborn Checklist for New Parents

Sorry for the lack of posts recently (besides sports spreadsheets) but the reason is because I’ve been getting ready for something big, something exciting, something life-altering: my wife and I are expecting our first child next month! We’re super stoked to be having a son but anxious at the same time. We’ve been working hard at getting everything ready but I can’t help thinking, “what if we’ve forgotten something important?” There have been so many things to do and there are so many things yet to do. How does a new parent keep it all organized? My solution is to use an Excel spreadsheet of course!

 

 

In order to keep myself organized and to help other future parents I’ve put together what I hope is the ultimate newborn checklist in Excel. This master file is composed of four separate sheets (I imagine I'll probably add more in the future too):

Things to do BEFORE the Baby is Born

The first sheet is a getting ready for baby checklist. It includes a list of things you should do before your baby is born and how soon before the due date they should be completed by.

Baby Registry Checklist

The next sheet in the file is the baby registry checklist. You can use this for a baby shower checklist or for a list of things you need before the baby arrives.

Hospital Bag Checklist

A list of what to pack for the hospital that you can easily print off if you would like.

 

Things to Do After the Baby is Born checklist

Another checklist of things that need to be done after the baby is born.

Behind the scenes so to speak, the newborn checklist spreadsheet uses named ranges, data validation to create lists, conditional formatting to color cells based on text, IF formulas, concatenate formulas, data filtering, and more. You’re free to poke around the spreadsheet if you want to see how it works or you don’t have to deal with any of that if you don’t want to and simply fill in the information or print it off.

My goal is to make this the ultimate resource for new parents. I’ve tried to include everything such as what to pack in hospital bag for mom. Tasks can be assigned to husband or wife. I also included some links to some services that can help you save money, like Amazon Mom. Believe me guys, your wives will be very impressed and happy if you use this list and actually help her prepare (yay brownies points). Download the spreadsheet for free using the link below.

Newborn checklist.xls download

Please let me know in the comments if you enjoy this newborn checklist and if you would like to see more parenting Excel templates like it.

2013 MLB Playoff Bracket

October is here which means it’s time for the 2013 MLB playoffs to begin! The major league baseball regular season concludes on Sunday, Sept. 29 unless there are any necessary regular-season tie breaker games (Rays versus Rangers). The MLB playoffs are set to begin on Tuesday, October 1st. The Division Series returns to a 2-2-1 format this fall. Game 1 of the World Series is scheduled to be played on Wednesday, Oct. 23, in the ballpark of the American League champions.

 

My 2013 MLB playoff bracket includes the schedule and TV coverage lineup. As an Ohio guy I'll be rooting for the Reds and Indians, though I am happy for Pirates fans to see their tea finally make it to the playoffs. Who do you have winning your 2013 MLB playoff bracket?

2013 MLB Playoff Bracket.xls

Downloadable 2013-2014 NHL Schedule in Excel

The 2013 NHL season is about to begin and to help get you excited for it I’ve made an NHL schedule spreadsheet available to download for free. The spreadsheet contains the logo of every NHL team and is similar format to my NCAA football helmet spreadsheet and NFL helmet schedule (but I didn’t put logos for every game due to the sheer number of games compared to the football seasons).

2013-2014 NHL Schedule.xls download

How to Combine Excel Files

There have been countless times during my day job when I’ve had to combine multiple Excel files into one. I used to do it the old fashioned way of copy and paste but after doing this tedious and time consuming task I decided to write a VBA macro to help me out. I’ve now made the template available for you to use for free. This version of the combine Excel workbooks macro allows you to choose the directory of the Excel files to copy without having to change the code in the Visual Basic Editor. The steps to use the Combine Workbooks tool are as follows:

 

1. Place the Excel workbooks you want to combine into a single folder that contains no other files
2. Go to View>Macros
3. Select "Combine Workbooks" then click Run
4. Select the File where the spreadsheets you want to combine are located
5. Save the newly created file

Instructions are provided with the spreadsheet

Please note that this code will not work on protected sheets and it will automatically skip any blank worksheets in any of the workbooks saved in the folder. See how it works for yourself by watching my short demo video below:
 

 

Download the Combine Excel Files spreadsheet that contains the VBA code to copy all the worksheets from all the workbooks in a folder into the active workbook using this link:
 

Combine Files.xlsm download

Download a Wordpress Website Creation Checklist Spreadsheet

In the past two years I’ve created eight websites for various hobbies and niches I am interested in and that I felt were underserved in the online world. I use Wordpress as my content management system because it allows you to quickly create a website with no HTML or other coding experience. The steps to setup a new website are pretty much the same so I put together a Wordpress website creation checklist to help me remember to do everything. I’ve made this checklist into an Excel template which you can download for free by clicking the link below.

 

 

Two skills I encourage everyone to learn that I’ve found invaluable in my career is how to program VBA macros and how to build a simple website. In fact, in one of my most recent projects these skills were used hand-in-hand. I built the majority of the Observation Wheel database with an Excel spreadsheet and a few custom macros. Every row in my sheet contained all the information for a single observation wheel. I then had the macro export the data to Microsoft Word in the HTML format I needed for the site. I then simply copied and pasted that text into Wordpress and published it. I created pages for over eighty dfferent observation wheels almost instantly!

 

There are countless positive benefits for learning how to make a website. I’ve included a link to all the resources I use within the template and I've tried to include as many tips as I could think of. I begin with registering a domain name and take you all the way through setting up an email list. Download my Wordpress website creation checklist below and please feel free to ask me any questions you may have!

 

Wordpress Website Creation Checklist.xls download