[Free] Printable Racecards

[wilsonl]

Ultimately if there isn’t an API supported, freely provided, web based database available the only option is “scraping” a URL’s content and scraping ASP web pages isn’t what it was when they were purely HTML.

Thus it’s always going to be a multi-step process unless you invest significant effort in building automation tools but the risk with that is wasted effort when your dependency on the provider (RP in this case) make any changes.

As has been said above, getting into Excel is key, which DO does, thereafter there’s unlimited potential but due to the primary source, it can never have an infinite shelf life.

 

[Grasshopper]

Excel is really quite intuitive, DO, and not particularly difficult to work with. I dare say a 30-minute online tutorial would get you up-and-running, and just having the time to fiddle about with cell formats, would soon get the data presented in your preferred way.

You should not allow yourself to be intimidated by Excel. A man of your intellect would learn enough quickly enough, to make it entirely workable for you. And you can still print your race spreadsheet and do any manual fiddlings over the top of it, as you see fit.

PS. I am not on commission for selling Excel licenses, if anyone asks.

 

[Desert Orchid]

Cheers, GH. I'd like to think I could live up to your expectations of my intellect but my difficulty is that an Excel programme won't be able to work out my ratings for me. even the ratings facility on the RP site could only do so much. They don't have the function to be able to tweak ratings in the totally subjective way I do with individual performances.

That's why I need to do that with a pen and paper (and calculator). Word allows me to sort fields in ratings order which is really all I'd probably use Excel to do.

But once Cheltenham (maybe Aintree) is by I will look out an online tutorial. I used to have a couple of books. I think one was maybe Excel for Dummies and the other was a book I was given at an 'Introduction to Excel' In-Set course about 25 years ago!

 

[wilsonl]

Cheers, GH. I'd like to think I could live up to your expectations of my intellect but my difficulty is that an Excel programme won't be able to work out my ratings for me. even the ratings facility on the RP site could only do so much. They don't have the function to be able to tweak ratings in the totally subjective way I do with individual performances.

That's why I need to do that with a pen and paper (and calculator). Word allows me to sort fields in ratings order which is really all I'd probably use Excel to do.

But once Cheltenham (maybe Aintree) is by I will look out an online tutorial. I used to have a couple of books. I think one was maybe Excel for Dummies and the other was a book I was given at an 'Introduction to Excel' In-Set course about 25 years ago!

I’d disagree with that DO. What you need is a download of the official ratings, which you can get from BHA/HRI websites. That goes into your master worksheet.

You simply add an adjustment (+/-) column next to horses you want or feel necessary.

Then a regularly updated worksheet with the racecards you’re interested in/have downloaded, which via a vlookup (google it) dynamically looks up your own rating, applies and sorts accordingly based on differential etc.

The comments part is then any empty cell in the row you want.