Bracket Builder

BracketBuilder can't integrate directly with Excel's undo functionality, so we implement our own. For most operations, like inserting or removing a game, you can click the Undo to go back. You should be able to go back all the way to the beginning of the bracket, unless you have closed and reopened the workbook.

When you undo something, you can also click Redo if you decide you want it back.

Undo is very useful when you are building a bracket and you find yourself working into a corner -- that is, if you have placed the games and you find yourself unable to continue because you should have done things in a different order (like placing a difficult game first, even though its not the next game on the list of games to add).

You can change team names, fields, and times directly on the bracket by just typing into the cell (right on top of the formula). (NOTE: For team names, only do this for the first game the team plays). When you do this, BracketBuilder notices that there is a difference between the text in the bracket and the data on the "TeamsAndFields" Sheet. When this happens, the game is considered "dirty".

It can be very useful (though not required) for the TeamsAndFields sheet to be kept up-to-date with what is on the bracket. To update the TeamsAndFields sheet, click on the Update Bracket button. All the games at this point will no longer be dirty.

Its unfortunate that BracketBuilder includes this feature, but it is sadly a reality for many leagues. For whatever reason, a game may be considered higher or lower priority based on the teams participating. The original reason behind this was about teams that provided volunteer support for the tournament and teams that did not. Teams that provide volunteer support are a higher priority when assigning scarce volunteer resources for the game. A game with two volunteer teams is the highest priority, next is games with one of each, and lastly is games with two teams providing no volunteer support.

When you click on the Shade Priorities button, BracketBuilder will shade each game green/yellow/red according to the teams involved with the game, according to the priorities assigned to each team. Games that can't be determined yet (because the teams aren't known) will not get shaded unless its irrelevant which team wins the previous game. For example, if the top team for a game comes from the winner of Game 2, and Game 2 has two volunteer teams, then it doesn't matter who wins -- the top team is guaranteed to be a volunteer team.

On the TeamsAndFields sheet, each team has a priority (0 is highest, 1 is lowest). By default, all teams are highest priority (0). You can change these priorities to change the way games are shaded

I really hope most people don't have to use this feature...

There are several sheets behind the scenes that BracketBuilder uses. If you are planning on using Excel to create a PDF for your bracket (using File/Export and choose PDF), then you probably don't want all these sheets to be visible.

To switch between showing or hiding these sheets, click on the Show/Hide button

When you make really big brackets, you quickly run out of screen real estate to see the whole bracket. You can zoom out, but Excel has annoying repaint bugs when the zoom level is very low (feel free to report them! maybe if enough of us complain they might do something about it!)

In order to be able to see what days you are working with as you build the bracket, you can use Excel's Freeze Panes functionality. That can be tedious to setup (and clear) repeatedly, so you can use the Lock Days command to automatically set it up. You can do it again to unlock the days.

I live in the Seattle area, so even well into June we have rainouts. This can be a pain in the bracket since there's a lot of manual moving around you have to do, and the merged cells for days of the week is tedious.

To make this easier, use the Rainout Day command. This will insert a day into your bracket and move all of the games on the day you are raining out to the following day. It will also extend the connections across the day.

It's up to you to figure out how you want to markup the rainout day -- but at least the bracket made room for you!

To switch between showing or hiding these sheets, click on the Show/Hide button

When you play the championship game, what happens if the team from the winner's bracket wins the game? Well, you don't need the what-if game. How do you fix the bracket? You could do a lot of manual formatting, or you could just convert the bracket to a modified double elimination bracket and remove the what-if game.

To do this, first remove the championship and what-if games from your bracket using the Remove Game command. Then, click the RemoveWhatIf command to change the bracket to a modified double-elimination bracket. The list of games should update immediately to no longer show the what-if. Now you can just place the championship game where you want it and you should have the champion filled in automatically.

To switch between showing or hiding these sheets, click on the Show/Hide button

As you get started with BracketBuilder, you will notice coaching hints showing up. If you point your mouse at these coaching marks, you will see a teaching callout show up with some (hopefully) helpful information. These teaching callouts try not to show up too often, and many of them stop showing up after you see them a few times. You can also choose to never show again

You might find that you want to get them back, though. If that happens, you can click on Reset Coaching Tips and they will start showing up again.

When you are done placing all your games in the bracket, you will notice that the bracket still doesn't look completely polished -- the titles aren't centered, you have extra days in the bracket, and so on.

At this point, if you click on finishing touches, BracketBuilder will do some cleaning up to make your bracket look polished:

• The final day of the bracket is stretched out to cover both the final game as well as the champion
• All other days are removed from the bracket after the final game
• The title lines are merged and centered over the bracket
• The Hosted By and Last Updated markers are put at the bottom of the bracket
• The Print Area for the sheet is defined to cover only the bracket (and not the information to the left of the bracket)

Once you apply the finishing touches to the bracket, you can print and only the bracket will get printed, or you can export to PDF and only the bracket will get exported (assuming you use Show/Hide to hide the extra sheets.

Brings you to this help page.

Building a bracket often requires a human to make sure the tournament has the right balance between being packed as tightly as possible while still having time for teams to prepare for the next game, etc. But sometimes you just want to know where the "best" next place would be for a game (is it today? tomorrow?). BracketBuilder can place the next game for you when you click Place Nextgame

In order to figure out how to place games, there are rules about the tournament you can customize. By default, the tournament has 2 fields. Both fields can start games between 9am and 6pm on Saturday, 10am and 6pm on Sunday, and can start games only at 6pm on weekdays.

You can customize all of this on the Rules sheet

When you automatically place a game with Place Next, the only thing that is considered is where the next game is best placed. BracketBuilder doesn't consider how the rest of the tournament is affected by that game placement. For example, if the best place to put game 2 is on Tuesday, but by putting game 2 on Tuesday, we now can't play games 3 or 4 on Tuesday, causing a bunch of games to slip a day, then clearly game 2 should have waited.

The only way to know this is going to happen is to schedule the whole tournament and compare that with other full tournaments -- how long are the tournaments, how evenly placed are the games, etc. When you click Place Remaining, BracketBuilder tries out every combination of game placements and chooses the best overall outcome. This usually results in a better progression of games in the tournament.

You can customize all of this on the Rules sheet.

If you want to move a game on the bracket, you can remove the game (and all of the games after it), and then add the games back where you want them. BracktBuilder can also try to move the game for you, and fix up all the connections. Its not perfect, and if your bracket is large it probably won't work. BUT, if all you want to do is change the size of a game or make a simple move, then give this a try!

The first part of moving a game with BracketBuilder is to pick up the game. Just select any cell in or on the game on the bracket, and click the Pick Up Game button. When you do this, the entire game will get selected.

After you have picked up the game, you should select where you want the game to go. If you just select a single cell, this will get treated as the Top Team cell for the game. Otherwise, you can select the entire range you want the game to go to. You should only select one column (don't include the score or line columns). Once you have made your selection, click the Drop Game button.

If you want to remove a game from the bracket, you can find the game in the list of games and press the - sign to remove it. The other way to do it is to just select any cell in or on the game in the bracket and click the erase game button.

Sometimes pieces of games get left behind, especially when the bracket is manually edited. If you want to remove parts of a game that have been left behind, or to remove a broken game complete, select all of the cells you want to clear and click the erase game button.

Sometimes you can make formatting changes to the bracket, or even delete parts of the gaem. If this happens, you can just Repair the game by clicking the Repair Game button. This will delete and add the game back to the bracket, inserting all of the formulas and formatting to make things work again.