CC/DB Tip of the Day - 6/28 - Copying to/from Draft Buddy

[Mike MacGregor 20]

Copying and Pasting Data to/from Draft Buddy

 

Since when did copying and pasting become so difficult it needs to be a "tip"? Well, after we packed about a million and one features into Draft Buddy, thats when. Has anyone tried simply copying some cells in Buddy and then pasting them to another worksheet in Buddy, or from another workbook to Buddy? It doesn't work, does it? Strange. Try it again, same result. This works in every other Excel spreadsheet you've ever touched. Here is the deal-e-o...

 

Draft Buddy does have a lot of features, a lot of formulas and a lot of lookups. What this resulted in was a slow Draft Buddy. So, steps were taken to speed up Draft Buddy, and the main initiative developed by FFT Geek spatton was to make Buddy turn automatic calculations to manual, and then only calculate portions of Draft Buddy as cells change or users click around Buddy. This way it doesn't have to update every single formula through the entire file for every little change. Overall this works pretty well, except it can screw up simple copying and pasting. So, try this as a workaround:

 

1. Save your Buddy file for changes. This will update all formulas on save.

 

2. Close Draft Buddy.

 

3. Open Draft Buddy but choose disable macros.

 

By disabling macros then Buddy will not alter your default calculation settings, which are probably auto-calc. You can always check the settings by choosing Tools > Options > Calculation.

 

At this point, you should be able to copy any cells and paste them anywhere you want just like you would in any other Microsoft software. Highlight what you want to copy, hit CTRL-C to copy, go to where you want to paste it, select and hit CTRL-V.

 

Of course if you need Buddy to do some sort of action again, like pulling data from the Compiler or running the countdown clock, then you will need to close the file again, open and enable macros.

 

 

Distributing the by team Tab

 

Here is a somewhat related and handy tip, especially for the Commishes out there. You've just finished your draft and want to send the rosters around to the league. Since you used Draft Buddy, the easiest method for you is to send the by team tab. Here is how it is done...

 

1. In Draft Buddy, click on the by team tab. Click on the top left corner (grey area) of the tab to select (highlight) the entire tab. View Image Hit CTRL-C to copy.

 

2. Select File > New > Blank Workbook. This will open a new Excel file with nothing in it. Hit CTRL-V to paste the by team tab to this new file.

 

3. Now you have a separate file with the by team tab, but the formulas are still there and we want to convert those to data. Without moving the cursor anywhere, you're going to copy and paste all of this tab on top of itself. Hit CTRL-C to copy again, and then select Edit > Paste Special... > As Values.

 

4. Select File > Save As... and give this new file a name so you can email it out to your league. "rosters.xls" works, but I'm kind of partial to "[insert your name]s_first_step_to_domination_over_you_hosers.xls" or something similar

 

That's it. Some notes:

 

- It seems you can send copy/paste data outbound from Buddy without the issues as mentioned at the top. You just can't go the other way. If you do run into those problems with data not pasting, then try closing Buddy, re-opening and disabling macros before doing these steps.

 

- I initially started this tip using Edit > Move or Copy Sheet to get the by team tab in a new file, but then I realized it copies some macros and then when people open it they will get the enable or disable macros message. To prevent that, I suggest just using copy/paste and not Edit > Move or Copy Sheet.

 

- The final paste As Values will remove all formulas and should prevent your leaguemates from getting an annoying link to other data sources, update or don't update prompt.

 

- When I tried this, copying/pasting the by team tab appropriately pasted all the formats including column width. Post here if yours doesn't do that as there is a quick fix for that.

 

- If you want to remove the gridlines in your new file, select Tools > Options > View and uncheck "Gridlines".