Excel program help for a prediction league

adstristar 

You've described fairly completely the Process that results in the points each player gets. So that's a good start.

What would be helpful now is to get a comprehensive understanding of the raw data Input, i.e., the data that will go through that Process in order to result in the desired Output.

At the risk of over-simplifying, I would describe the spreadsheet you shared with your first posting as one that combines pieces of each of the above--Input, Process, Output--into one place, but the reality is that you manually do a good deal of the process and just use Excel to calculate a running total.

To use Excel more fully, it helps to separate the Input so it's altogether on its own, even on its own sheet or tab in the workbook; similarly the Output--on its own page or tab--with the Process being that which converts the Input into the Output, the formulas and functions of Excel.

From what I can piece together reading your descriptions so far (and forgive any misunderstanding; as noted, you're dealing with an activity I know next to nothing about),

The raw data input from each of your players would be something like

• Week 1, John, Team A will beat Team B by 3-2
• Week 1, John, Team D will beat Team C by 5-0
• Week 1, John, Team F and Team E will Draw..... 
• Week 1, John, (etc., following pattern above for each match of the week)
• Week 1, Tom, (etc., following pattern above for each match of the week)
• and so on for each of your players

Then there would be raw input after the weeks games have been played, something you'd enter, which would show the actual results for each game. Something like:

• Week 1, Team A lost to B by ____
• Week 1, Team C beat D by _____
• Week 1, Team E.... etc

What I've shown above is not probably the most efficient way to record that data, but it gets at the notion that it's just raw data. Facts (or Predictions of Facts). So far, no formulas are needed...your players are just providing their predictions and you are entering actual results.

It's only after all that Input is gathered together that we start using Excel to Process the raw data, to give each player the scores his/her predictions warrant, after which we can look at the desired display of the Output.

What I'd like from you before we get to the process is how you see that raw data most effectively being entered.

(By the way, a related question, do you see people entering their own data into a shared spreadsheet, either a shared workbook in Excel on OneDrive, or something comparable? That would certainly make your job easier....you'd just enter the actuals at the end of each week's games.)