Excel Soccer World Cup 2011 Planner, including a prediction game

A user – much thanks – informed us on the german site of the planner about a typing error concerning the country abreviation for Equatorial Guinea. We unfortunately used EQR instead of EQG. However the typing error does not affect the calculations in the planner as we implemented the calculations independantly from the country abreviations. So, we are not planning to release an update for the planner to correct this typing error. Thanks for your comprehension.

We have just released the Add-In tool for the Excel Soccer World Cup Planner. The Add-In was tested in Excel 2003, 2007 and 2010 in the three languages German, English and French. The tool is also available in thos three languages. When running the Add-In for the first time, you are asked to setup some settings, like the different folders. We recommend you to keep the default settings.

The planner file should be located in the subfolder “Planner” of the Add-In tool. An online help is available at help.excel-soccer-2011.de. However, please note, that the online help contents are referring to the planner version from last year. But, as the features of the current version of the Add-In tool are very similar to the features of the previous Add-In, the help content still applies. Additionally, you can vist our forum forum.excel-soccer-2011.de for getting support and help or giving us feedback to the Add-In. In the following, the most important features of the Add-In:

• Handles the planner files in XLS and XLSX file format.
• Server requests for the results of the games and transfer of these results to the planner.
• Import and export functions for the prediction game data and the player data.
• Possibility to transfer the data from one planner to another planner, useful for updates, for example.
• Possibility to lock some areas in the planner.

The Add-In tool is digitally signed with a certificate issued on my name “Mourad Louha”. When lauching the tool for the first time, Excel may ask you if you would like to trust the Add-In tool. If not, then the file has probably modified without my autorisation. In this case, please contact me.

We have just released the Version 2.56 Build 250611 of the Excel Soccer World Cup Planner. This version includes some minor formatting changes, as the fixation of rows and columns in the sheet for the predictions. This update is optional, as no changes to the functions were made.

We have published a forum for the Excel Soccer World Cup Planner. The forum is also available in the three languages German, English and French. You can ask there questions about the planner or – this would be great – inform us about bug in the planner. And, if you like to suggest new features for the planner, a special category on the forum collects all ideas from our users. If you register on the forum, you can also choose your preferred language in your profile.
Here’s the link to the forum: forum.excel-soccer-2011.de
 
Please note: this post was written in the blog and is automatically posted to the forum by the blog.

This post is just a test for checking, if the synchronization between this blog and the Excel Soccer forum works.
Posts, which are written on the blog may also be posted in an appropriate category of the forum.

We have just published the planner files in the Open XML file format (XLSX). We recommend for those people, who are using Excel 2007 or Excel 2010, to download the XLSX files. However, in mixed environments, where Excel 2003 and higher versions are used, you should prefer the XLS files.

In contrast to last year, fortunately, we were able to easily convert the XLS files to the XLSX format by using Excel 2010 xlsx without doing a time consuming post-processing. The next steps are now to finish our work on the Add-In tool and continue to setup our forum.

Unfortunately, we discovered an error when calculating the matches for semi-finals only after we published the version 2.50. As you can see, we are also not perfect and errors can happen, even if we had intensively tested the last version. Unfortunately too, the people who had already downloaded the version 2.50 of the planner may replace their version with this new one. Sorry.

However, we also know that many people do not regularly check this site for planner upates. These users may eventually only see the error later, when using the planner. So, we have decided to implement an additional function in the coming Add-In for transferring the data from one version of the planner (meaning 2.50) to another newer version of the planner. We hope by this way minimize any inconvenience from our users.

We are happy to announce the todays’ release of the Excel Soccer World Cup Planner 2011 for the Womans’s Soccer World Cup 2011 in Germany. We have implemented a new navigation bar and some more improvements for the planner. And the planner is currently available in German, English and French. An extra version for Excel 2007 and Excel 2010 (Open XML file format) will be published in a few days.

We wish you fun with our planner and included prediction game

After the great success of our free Excel planner for the World Cup World Cup 2010 in South Africa, we are now happy to announce the Excel Soccer World Cup 2011 Planner for the Woman’s World Cup this year. The World Cup takes place this time in Germany and will start on 26 June 2011 at 15:00 clockwith the match between Nigeria and France.

The new version of the planner will include an update for the user interface and, if we have time to implement this, new features. In addition, this website will also be relaunched with a new design and the add-on tool will be improved. And, as for the World Cup 2010, the planner will be published at least in German, English and French.

Of course, we will be happy about any contribution or help to the project. Just leave a comment here or write us an email to chef (at) excel-soccer-2011 (dot) de.

See you later

We have received some inquiries, why the Add-On tool does not work after an upgrade from Office 2010 Beta to Office 2010 Final. On some installations (not every time, unfortunately we did not find a systematic behaviour for this problem), we noticed that the system library “mscomctl.ocx” seems not to be correctly registered. Therefore, when launching the tool, Excel shows an error message. The message informs the user that the tool misses a reference to a library or that a compiler error occured. As the tool needs the reference to “mscomctl.ocx”, a new registration of the library can probably fix the problem. For doing this, please enter in a command line or in the Windows 7 search box following command and then press enter:

regsvr32 /u c:\windows\system32\mscomctl.ocx

Then, please enter the following command and also press enter…

regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\mscomctl.ocx

Note: this works only on 32 Bit systems. Also, you may not have any application opened while entering the commands. And, of course we can not give any warranty that this will work on your system. If you have installed Windows in another path than mentionned above, you may adapt this path to you installation.

By the way, this tipp can perhaps also help for other VBA applications which needs a reference to the mentionned library.

On some installations of Excel, we noticed an error in the charts sheet of the exported files. The chart showed incorrect rankings or double entries. This was due to an incorrect result of the TRUNC() function in Excel. We have replaced our formula with a new one which does not use the TRUNC() function. We recommend to install this update and redo the export of the user and prediction data. After the first install of the updated, you may store once again the settings of Add-On tool.

The transfer of this website to a new server including the databases is now complete, if you can see this post.

An error has been fixed when importing the responses to the bonus questions. The error occured in all versions excepted german. This was due to the fact, that the sorting order differs between the different languages. We recommend to download the new version, to unpack the files to the folder of a previous installation and overwrite all files. When starting the tool for the first time, you may save the settings once again.

We have just released version 2.25 of the Add-On tool. The tool has been, as many user asked for, extended with a new feature for protecting the user and prediction game data. You can reach the new page shown in the screenshot below from the main page of the tool. And you can protect or unprotect the prediction game data for each stage.

Other changes and corrections made to the tool:

• The tool now correctly imports the answers to the bonus questions.
• Sometimes, the tool had exported invalid answers to the bonus questions; this was fixed.
• Changes to the help file were made.

These are the last changes we have planned for the tool and the planner before the World Cup. Of course, if a bug si found, we will then fix it. Have all fun with our planner.

We have released the Add-In tool for the Excel Soccer World Cup 2010 Planner. The Excel Add-In can be used in Excel 2002(XP), 2003, 2007 and 2010 and needs macros to be activated. We have intensily tested the software in several cases. However, as nobody is perfect, we can not exclude that there is not a bug or an error in the tool. If you find a bug, please contact us. When starting for the first time, the tools loads the integrated online help file. We highly recommend to read the topics about the installation of the tool, the export and import features and the data transfer feature. Main features of the tool:

• Centralized management of the Excel Soccer World Cup 2010 Planner.
• Data transfer from previous versions of the planner. The version 1.25, 1.50 and 2.00 are recognized.
• Server query for the game results and tranfer of the results to the planner.
• Template driven export of the data for the games, predictions and users for each user.
• Template driven import if the prediction data for the participants to the prediction game.
• The Add-In is be available in German, Englisch and French.
• A help file is also available in the three languages.

Those people who can not activate macros – for example in their companies – may please ask their administrator for support. The planner can be used without having the Add-On tool installed.

And please note that we can not give any warranty for the installation and use of the tool.

We have the pleasure to inform you that we have released the Version 2.00 Build 150510 of the Excel Soccer World Cup 2010 Planner. The new version contains some new features, which can be found in the version history on the download page.

As we added much more features to the planner and the add-on tool then planned, we have increased the announced version 1.75 to version 2.00.

However, we must unfortunately move the release date of the Add-On tool for the planner by one week to the 05/22/2010. This is mainly due to the following reasons. We would like to add a help file to the Add-On tool which also covers the Excel Soccer World Cup 2010 Planner. Writing the topics for the help file, creating the screenshots and translating the help file to English and French is much more work as planned. Also, we encountered in our tests for the tool some performance problem, which we would like to fix before publishing the tool. Finally, we have not completed all tests for the tool on other systems with the different languages. Thank you for your patience.