SCR Services - Data Entry Tips

Tips for "Data-Entering" Race Results

The SCR places the results for club races and assisted races on both the SCR web site and in the club newsletter. If only one person were to be the "responsible individual" for performing the data-entry of race results, that person would be overwhelmed. Data entry is time consuming and takes considerable attention to detail. That is why the club spreads this task around to many of its members.

It is the Race Director's responsibility to make sure someone is assigned to perform the task of data-entry. In practice, it is usually the Race Director or one of the "results" volunteers who agrees to perform data-entry for a specific event. This task needs to be performed as soon as possible after the event (runners expect to view the race results on the club's web site very soon after the race). Ideally, results should be e-mailed to the club webmaster at webmaster@socorunners.org within a few hours after the race. When the results are promptly sent to the webmaster, they usually appear on the club web site shortly after they have been sent.

This short tutorial provides a few "tips" for entering the data into an Excel spreadsheet in order to be emailed as an "attachment". Results often are sent in many other forms, as well, however this tutorial specifically addresses Microsoft Excel because it is widely available. This tutorial won't go into detail about how to use Excel (you're on your own to learn that), but it does address the common areas that concern most people who use Excel to perform data-entry.

First, make sure you have a spreadsheet column identified for each important piece of information. Obviously, you want to include each finisher's: finishing place, name, age, sex, and finishing time. Also, it's often nice to include the city or state where the runner resides. In addition, some result lists include the runner's "age group" place (we usually see this when results are "computer generated"). When there is more than one race during the event, make sure you have one column that identifies the event (that way, we're able to sort the spreadsheet in different ways and still keep the results separated by "race").

Some Race Directors want to enter first and last names in different columns and others enter the entire runner's name into a single column. It's usually more versatile to use two different columns so results can be sorted by name, if desired. If you want a column to contain the entire runner's name, you can generate that column in the following manner:

Let's assume you have the last name in column C4 and the first name in column D4. To view the entire name in column E4 you can enter the following formula into the E4 cell:
=D4 & " " & C4
Of course, you need to replicate this formula down the entire spread sheet so it will perform its task in lines 5, 6, 7, etc.

Some Race Director's like to put other data into each line of the spreadsheet...such as: address, birthday, phone number, etc. This information can be useful if you want to use the spreadsheet to generate a mailing list for next year's event or send "results" post cards to the participants. We won't include this extra information in the result listing.

A area that often causes problems for the person performing data entry into Excel is: finishing time. Excel wants to put any value that looks like a "time" into a "time" format. However, Excel usually makes the wrong decision because it assumes all times contain hours and minutes. For example: assume have a 5K participant who finishes the race in 21 minutes and 45 seconds. Therefore, you enter 21:45 into the spreadsheet. Excel, in turn assumes you meant 21 hours and 45 minutes and displays your entry as 21:45:00 (it added the zeros at the end for "seconds"). Unfortunately, this really messes things up (especially if you need to perform calculations on the times to calculate paces or deltas). There are several ways to get Excel to perform properly when handling your times...but I'll discuss the easiest below:

The easiest way to have Excel handle finishing times is to not let it think the time is a "time". To do this, tell the Excel you're going to enter a number into the cell and ask it to format that number for you, as follows:

Click on the column that will contain the finishing times (if you are going to enter the times into column F, then click on column F at the top of the spreadsheet). You'll see the entire column become highlighted.
Now select "Format" from in Excel's top line menu and select "Cells..." from the list that appears.
The "Format Cells" window will appear on your screen.
Make sure the "Number" tab is selected and click "Custom" under the "Category" header.
In the single line entry box under the word "Type"...overtype whatever is in the box (probably the word "General") with: 0":"00
That is: zero Quote colon quote zero zero - with no embedded spaces. This format tells Excel the take the numbers you enter into that cell, treat them as numbers, and insert a colon before the last two digits.
Click "OK" to dismiss the "Format Cells" window.
Now any set of numbers you enter into the column you formatted will be treated as a number (not a time). In addition, you can now save a bit of time entering data because you don't have to enter the colon. For example: to enter a time of 21:45, simply enter 2145. When you press Enter (or move to another cell), Excel will insert the colon for you.

You will find that the above procedure works fine for finishing times less than an hour (up to 59:59). But you'll see that times over an hour are not formatted properly. For example, when you enter 1:05:25 as 10525 Excel will format it as 105:25. I suggest you ignore this until you're through entering the results. Normally, most people enter the results in "finishing order" so all cells that contain a time greater than 59:59 will be grouped together. When you're finished entering data, select all cells in your "finishing time" column that contain values of an hour of more and change the format of those values to 0":"00":"00 (use the procedure above for setting a cell's format). Wallah! everything should be ready for printing your results or sending them to the SCR web site.