Ok, so I am not sure which spreadsheet some of you are talking about. The spreadsheet linked in the first post on this thread is problematic for several reasons. The OP's spreadsheet doesn't include tracking for different types of awards, it doesn't properly calculate the multiplier, and is great for tracking a single person's gaming, but not good for tracking more than one. The result is that you have to have separate entries for multiple people and that can get tedious to update.
Assuming that you're looking for a spreadsheet to track the hours you personally spend gaming, the one in the OP on this thread could be used, with a few modifications. Additionally, you would need to have one copy of the spreadsheet for each category of game.
In my personal opinion, the spreadsheet linked in this thread (
viewtopic.php?f=567&t=6721) is far better. That said, it has a couple issues as well. Unfortunately, it has a couple of bugs that I have found and the OP who posted it (Christopher Bayonet) has run into some RL issues and hasn't had time to work with it. He locked it down when he released it, which means I can't get in to edit some of the parts which seem to need fixing. I'm therefore tempted to try to reconstruct it to fix the errors I see, but I know he was working on rebuilding it entirely before RL decided that it needed attention. If you need some help with that spreadsheet, here's the fundamental usage:
1. Open the spreadsheet and start by going to the Member List. List the members in your chapter including all the details you can get.
2. Go to the Chapter tab and enter the details for the chapters represented in the member list tab. There can be more than one chapter listed (this is a great spreadsheet for TG or Fleet to track awards, with some limitations).
3. Go to the Game List tab and ensure that the game you are playing is listed. If not, add it to the bottom of the list of games with appropriate details. *IMPORTANT* This must be done to get the spreadsheet to track hours properly!
4. Once all those things are in place, go to the Game Log page. Starting at the top of the spreadsheet (note, you can enter data, but you cannot delete rows or copy/paste for entry of multiple entries at a time, an unfortunate limitation), add in a row for each game played. Select the name of the game from the pulldown in the first column, the date you played, the location played, the start and end times for the game, and use the drop-downs in the rest of the columns to the right to select the names of the players (which you put into the Member List tab initially). Note that if you manually type these items in and don't *EXACTLY* match the name of the game or the member, it won't count properly.
5. On the Award Log page, enter in any awards you (or any of the other members) already have. Note that there are a couple of issues here, but I can address those separately.
6. Go back to the member list. Once a member has completed the necessary hours of gaming to earn a particular level of Marksmanship award, an X will appear next to their name. Go back to the page called Marksmanship Award (Master) and select the member's name from the drop down at the top of the page. The fields will all auto-populate with the information about the member and about which awards they qualify for, based upon time spent playing.
It should be noted that the following errors seem to be present in this spreadsheet:
1. The award log needs to be filled out for every award a member has earned, even if it isn't applicable to their branch, for the Member List "X" to show up correctly.
2. The award log can have only one entry per member per award. That is to say that if you earned the Sharpshooter Rifle award and then subsequently earned the Rifle Expert award, you would have to update the existing Rifle Sharpshooter entry to show as Expert. The spreadsheet will not continue looking for additional rows with the data for higher awards in a single category for the same member.
I think I found some other issues, but I can't recall them offhand. In any case, I hope this helps someone. Personally, I think this is a great tool, I just wish I could get in and help fix it to make it better. If you find yourself in need of assistance to get the tool I linked working, please feel free to reach out to me here or via email at
eplossl.trmn@gmail.com.
