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Mcruic Mcruic is offline
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Default Is it possible to use variables in Excel?

Right, this is quite hard to describe, but I'll have a go.
I am trying to find a satisfactory way of making a football (soccer) ranking
spreadsheet using Excel without having to resort to too much programming. I
have a large collection of international results (over 32,000 and counting)
which I use to define the current ranking system. There is basically a
formula for each match that calculates the points gained for each match based
on difference in rating between two teams and the match result.

The problem is, as the rating changes for each team after each match, how
can I somehow store this new rating without having to put a formula in each
row? Some teams have only played a handful of games out of the 32,000, so
how can I only use the number of cells necessary for each team, rather than
having 32,000 rows * 310 columns (there are 310 teams), as my computer does
not have the resources to display such a vast number of formulae, and ceases
to operate.

At the moment, I am basically putting a formula into each team's column
saying "If the team playing in row2 is team x, then add team x's points from
this game to team x's rating points from the row above, else, use team x's
ratings points from the row above unchanged". So, basically, there are 308
redundant formulae in each row, as only 2 teams can play in any one match.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.