Import Ski Results

Import High School Ski Results to Excel

Many coaches can make use of a list of skiers from their own school, sorted by time. This is easy to do, using the import function of Excel. These instructions are created on a Macintosh - the steps are almost exactly the same in Windows.

Save the data as a text file

Go on the web to the results page and save the data. In Safari (Macintosh) go to the File menu and select Save As. With Internet Explorer v 7, select Save As from the Page menu.

Launch Microsoft Excel

Go to your applications and find Microsoft Excel. If you don't use it normally, you might wish to put an icon on your dock (mac users). From the file menu, select Open.

Open the text file

Navigate to your text file. Depending on what version of Excel you are using, you may need to change the File Types shown to include 'All files' in order to see the text files. (In Windows, the default is to show only Excel files)
Click 'Open'

Import text wizard

The next steps include the Import Text Wizard. This is a very powerful tool which is worthwhile spending some time to understand. The first window asks about delimited vs. fixed width import. Delimiters are symbols (either showing or hidden) that split up columns. Fixed width is just where spaces are used to put things in columns.

The results are created so that either method can be used. The delimiter method works very well. Click on Delimited import and Next

Import, window 2

For Delimiters, select 'Other' and enter the forward slash ( / ). It doesn't matter whether you clear the tab delimiter.
Click Finish

Edit spreadsheet

You should now have a spreadsheet with all of your data. To separate out the boys from the girls, put something to sort by in a blank column and fill down.
Put an 'm' in cell F9
and press Enter.
Carefully move your mouse so that it is over the little square in the corner of the cell. Note that the cursor changes shape to a simple black plus.
Drag down to the bottom of the boys. This will fill m's all the way down.
Do the same with an 'f' for the girls.

Sort your data

Highlight the entire spreadsheet (click on the little square in the upper left corner that is above the letter A and to the left of the number 1)
From the Data menu, select Sort.
Your data do not have a header row.
Sort first by Column E (your school)
Then by Column F (sex)
Then by Column B (time)
Click OK

Delete extra columns

You can delete columns of data that you do not care about by:
Click on the letter at the top of the column to select it.
From the Edit menu, select Delete

Examine your results

All of your skiers should be together in one batch, sorted by sex and time. (Go Lathrop! from a 1969 graduate...)

Extra spaces

The data still have extra spaces in them from the fixed field formatting. If you wish to get rid of them, do a Find and Replace.
From the Edit menu, select Find
Click on the Replace tab in the window
For 'Find what:' press the space bar once to enter a space (you won't see anything except that the cursor moves over a space)
Leave the 'Replace with:' empty. You don't want anything to replace the space.
Click Replace All

For the purists, you will note that the space after the comma in the name will disappear. You can put it back by doing one more Find/Replace.
Find what: enter a comma (just the single keystroke , )
Replace with: enter a comma and a space
Replace all.

This should work smoothly

If this doesn't work, a modest amount of support will be given by Pete Tryon. E-mail him at prtryon@alaska.net.

Return to Pete's Ski Information index page.