Paste from Excel into Sierra

In addition to our normal tasks of marketing, tech support and development, the Tournament Expert staff continues to run tournaments. It lets us test our new features against live situations and suggests new ways to approach problems. One particular problem occurred several times. We received lists of players in spreadsheet programs like Excel or Quattro Pro but had no easy way to get the list into Sierra. This clearly demanded an - immediate - solution. The feature was written and added and we hope it will be as useful for you as it is to us.

Sierra has two commands that read the Windows clipboard and put the contents directly into our Player List. You decide which command to use by looking at the information in the spreadsheet.

The first command pastes the rows and columns into Sierra's Player List starting at the currently selected cell. This command is used when part of the spreadsheet needs to be copied to the Player List. Maybe one or two columns or just a few rows.

The second paste command is used when the player names are in one column (First Last or Last, First). This command reads each name, decides which format is present, extracts the player's names and places them in the Last Name and First Name columns of the Player List.

It's so quick that it almost feels like there is a direct link between the spreadsheet and the Player List.

Both Sierra and Inyo ship with a blank spread sheet that can be sent to Tournament Directors for them to fill in. If the spreadsheet comes back as expected, it can be read directly into the Player List. But sometimes the file is returned reformatted. We used to have to swap columns, separate names and the like in order to read the data. Now we just use our new Copy & Paste routines and we're ready to go.

 

 

Excel Copy & Paste

Blank spreadsheet with instructions that can be emailed to outside groups to be filled out and returned.

Example list of players that can be pasted into Sierra. The player names in column C are selected and copied to the clipboard.

Result of pasting player names and affiliations into the Player List. Notice that the last name and first name have been separated into the correct columns.