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Desperate cry for help please

pinemarten

pinemarten

Sire
Evening all,

I need to get into the 21st century but to do so I need someone with IT skills & the patience of a saint.
I am a 51 year old computer dinosaur who still in this day & age does all his research in manuscript.
I see all you guys throwing out analysis / charts, etc on here & I just get more & more frustrated by the day.
Needless to say the time I am losing writing everything down when the press of a couple of buttons would give me much more quality time on finding those winners.
Enough of the embarrassing myself.

What is it I am after.

(1) I presently thanks to a very generous gentleman have access to a database which I would like to use in my evaluations this coming season. Various entries within the d/b need to be xferred to a spreadsheet for any particular race I may like to evaluate.
If for example I need to incorporate for the whole field the horses names, last 6 form figs & their race card no' from the Racing Post website into the excel spreadsheet how do I do it?
I should add that if I highlight the details from the RP site & then try to paste them onto excel the details do not come off in the correct font size, etc.
I have also tried to right click on the RP site details & then pressed the import to excel button & when I switch to excel I get some message I do not understand.
I think my excel is 2010.

(2) I presently buy the RP daily & have done for many years. As sad as it sounds I have 10 years back issues in my garage. I'm not divorced yet but it is getting a bit silly. The main reason for buying the paper is for the RP & Topspeed ratings which I can see daily on their site. Trouble is I do not know how to download them, store them, etc.
Can anybody help?

I appreciate you are all busy doing your own research, etc but whenever I have asked a question so far the help has been quick & excellent.
If I am asking too much this time then believe me it is understandable.

Kind regards,
 
i use excel but self taught not very good though.when i copy from the rp i left click mouse and drag arrow over area that you want to copy,then right click mouse then press copy.now go to excel page and right click then left click paste special then left click uncoded text. i had many a headache just learning that.:headbang:

good luck
 
Last edited:
Hi pinemarten pinemarten ,

Excel can be used to extract data from most, if not all, databases, including a text-file DB. I assume your friend who owns the database knows the format and how it is constructed and perhaps he can help you with that side of it. Normally, you would connect Excel to the DB then write a query to extract the data you need. I can't give specific instructions, as I don't know what DB format it is nor how it is constructed. For what it's worth, I do this every day with an MS-SQL Server DB, so can hopefully give you/your friend some help if needed.

As for the RP cards, I don't have a scraper for that, but a member here ( UK-21 UK-21 ) has a site where he provides an Excel file that helps with downloading RP cards for selected races. You'll find it at: http://www.uk-21.org/data/racecard-data-capture-tool.zip. Have a look at it and see if it meets your needs.

Ray
 
Hi pinemartin i cannot help with your above but would offer this .........Do not out your A4 pads.Using the computer might hasten the process of putting the thought of the horses positive chance in your head but exploring this via long hand will often help clarify the thought.

I seek a balance between the two and would suggest that during an age when it appears that ever more punters seek the quick fix via computer this might give an edge.? If there is a holy grail i would say its effort and pen and paper still play a part. ;)
 
Dont know if this will help you pinemarten pinemarten but i google and youtube so many things nowadays (in a desperate attempt to keep myself uptodate with things)
You may well find some of your answers this way, i find video tutorials on youtube massively helpful for so many things, even managed to save a few quid by sorting 2 niggly problems on my car this way!
 
Example, go into your computers/ipad youtube section and then in the search box type in something like 'extracting horse names from newspaper onto excel spreadsheet' and it will list you up a gazillion video tutorials
 
Morning all,

Firstly thank you for trying to help me.
In my school days I managed to pass my French & German exams but this computer language beats the hell out of me.

Tonytench

Tried your suggestion but when the data went into excel the text was all over the place. Big thank you though.

Rest of you,

I'll try to follow your advice but I have had my day mapped out for me today so it could be this evening before attempt it.

Good luck to anybody having a bet today.
 
pinemarten said:
Morning all,

Firstly thank you for trying to help me.
In my school days I managed to pass my French & German exams but this computer language beats the hell out of me.

Tonytench

Tried your suggestion but when the data went into excel the text was all over the place. Big thank you though.

Rest of you,

I'll try to follow your advice but I have had my day mapped out for me today so it could be this evening before attempt it.

Good luck to anybody having a bet today.
Click to expand...
I guess it's only girls then that get to do what they want every day:cool:
 
I'm not sure what you're asking for in your opening post (point 1) - are you trying to transfer fields/horses and data from his database or from the RP website racecards? Are you trying to xfer this into a blank spreadsheet or something else?

I used to copy RP cards onto spreadsheets and they didn't xfer neatly and took some time to tidy up but I had the time then and used them as cards for evaluating as they retained the embedded links to the RP website form etc and I managed to format them to include whatever else I wanted and so they printed off on a single sheet of A4 that I could take with me to the course, rather than a huge RP of which I would only look at 2 pages of when I got there.

I also kept my own spreadsheets for Lingfield only of every race result including times and ratings which took more time but I was concentrating on Lingfield then. That was good, as the tabs were for the varying distances from 5f to 2m+ and I could look at draw effect over distance, field size and overall - my conclusion to that was it wasn't worth factoring in as it happens.
 
Hi Marmite,

The same to you as all the other fellow members a big thank you for trying to help.

I am trying to xfer data from both RP race cards & my colleagues d/b onto a blank spreadsheet for the race I am going to evaluate.

The RP data seems to be the problem. I copy the data then open excel & when I paste (or paste special) the data crosses over in as you describe an untidy format, ie - each horse name, etc are in blue boxes & each box covers X amount of normal excel spaces.

I think the latter (from the d/b) is just a copy / paste exercise I hope.

Regards,
 
pinemarten said:
The RP data seems to be the problem. I copy the data then open excel & when I paste (or paste special) the data crosses over in as you describe an untidy format, ie - each horse name, etc are in blue boxes & each box covers X amount of normal excel spaces.
Click to expand...
Okay, try this:
1. Select the racecard data you want to bring into Excel and type Ctrl+C.
2. Select cell A1 in Excel and type Ctrl+V.
3. Select columns B:I (NOT A!) and type Alt+OCA to stretch the columns out.
4. With columns B:I still selected, right-click on any cell within that selection and press "Format cells...".
5. In the dialogue box, go to the Alignment tab and deselect "Wrap text". You may have to click it twice to clear the box. Press "Ok" to clear the dialogue box.
6. Columns B:I should still be selected; reselect if not. Type Alt+OCA again.
7. Delete any rows you don't want.

Start with this, see how you get on and come back to me if you'd rather have plain text only.

Ray
 
OR

Try using the At-a-glance cards and after copying, right click where you want to paste and select Paste Special and then select text. That should give you somewhere to start from.
 
AND

If using ArkRoyal ArkRoyal 's method, before you paste, select column E, right-click on the selection and press "Format cells.." and on the Number tab select "Text" in the Category box and press "Ok". This will prevent the weights being converted to dates.

Ray
 
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