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Hi,
I’m a relative newbie to this forum. My initial attempts at logging on was plagued by site problems. To cut a long story short i am stuck as i don’t know how to import daily racing results into Excel and would be appreciative of any help out there. looking forward to hearing from some decent soul
ty
Sorry
CC
I am not your "techie" but there are some here and am sure they will be along with a helping hand once
Matron
lets them in.
Newbie hey . . . Welcome
Billy's Outback Shack
Its possible from both the Post and the Sporting Life, but via the Life is much easier.
All you have to do is click on "data", then "get external data", then "new web query". A box will open entitled "New web query". Click on "advanced" at the bottom and another small box will open entitled "Advanced web query options". Check the "disable date recognition" option and press OK. That will close the small box, leaving you with the "New web query" box.
You now have two options. The one I take is to set my browzer home page as the Sporting Life’s results page. If you do that before you start to download results, and then click on the "browze web" button, another window will open which, when maximised, will be the Sporting Life results page. Click on the race the details of which you want to download and the details will appear. Finally, click on the Microsoft Excel icon at the bottom of the screen and a new Excel book will open with the data from the race in the first page. (The second option is to type the Sporting Life results page url into the address line of the "New web query" box each time, but unless you only want to do the odd race every so often it is much the less efficient.)
It is then a matter of finding the easiest way to transfer the data you want into your database. I do it by cutting the data I want, as a block, from the first page of the Excel book, pasting it into the second page, from which that part of the block that I want to include in my database is copied by formulae to the third page of the Excel book, in the right columns as far as my database is concerned. Then the final step is simply cutting and pasting the data from the third page into the database.
The above will almost certainly sound complicated and longwinded, but in reality it isn’t. It took me an hour or so to sort out the formulas for copying the data from page two of the Excel book to page 3, but having got a standard download book ready, using it to download the data for a race takes less than five minutes once one has done it a few times. I only collect data for certain types of race, anything up to twenty on some Summer Saturdays. On average, I suppose I download six races a day and it takes less than half an hour. (And that includes adding manually the one piece of data the Sporting Life results lack, each horse’s Official Rating, which is important to me.) Doing it every night requires discipline, and can be wearisome, but the result is a bespoke database with exactly the data I use to analyse a race in a form which can be loaded into a race analysis Excel book in minutes.
The above is written for downloading from Internet Explorer to Excel 2000. Much the same applies to the next couple of versions of Excel but I am not sure that it applies to the very latest. I’ve tried several versions of Excel and 2000 is, for this exercise, much the most user friendly.
thanks for the responses. a comprehensive answer indeed george j. i will give it a go. thank you
Welcome to the forum Charlie – sorry you had problems logging on –
can you send me details if you are able.i am very surprised that some tecky has not started a business selling bespoke excel databases to the racing communitys, i have spent a year takling this and it is only easy if you know what your doing
i reccommend a great book called….excel as my database
great book for the non teckys
Mr Forecast
I know enough about Excel to handle much of what I need, but have had to commission some macros whose complexity has exceeded my ability. Fortunately there are numerous Excel consultants out there – finadable via Google or freelancer websites – and fees for this kind of work are not high. (I’ve had macros built for less than £20.)
What I have not seen offered is bespoke back content, ie the data to put into one’s database, once created. The problem is that collecting data, especially retrospectively, is time-consuming. For example, I collect data for, on average, about half a dozen relevant races a day, taking me perhaps half an hour, so probably between 150 and 200 hours a year. When analysing races I work with three to four years data (my main current database starts from 01/01/08) so a base representing at least 500 hours work. And to collect the same data for all Flat and NH races would obviously take proportionately longer. This suggests to me that anyone in the business of supplying such data, in bespoke form, would have trouble finding customers as the charge he or she would have to make would be fairly high.
i have just found a great site called horse race base, i wont put the address up as no affilating here
take a look it does all kinds of stuff which can easily be imported in to excel
datasheets,stallion info,who raced who, who beat who, trainers,jockeys ect
I have an excel sheet that imports results from the Sportinglife.
It was written for me by somebody else so I won’t be able to answer any questions or make bespoke changes for anybody.
Anybody that wants a copy email me
At this moment I don’t have a lot of time as my M.I.L is unwell
and am in the process of moving her from hospital to residential
care, so I can’t promise to reply to any questions.Hopefully it will be of some use
All the best
Davey H
I can vouch for this code as it was the basis of my own code to import Sporting Life data into an Access database — still work in progress but now it is stable and runs every morning, for about 20 mins to download todays runners and yesterdays results, currently it holds data from July 2009 to today for every race in UK and Ireland
Dave
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