NFL Playoff Bracket manager guide
Getting Started
- Download the FREE NFL Playoff Bracket from the Goodies page here
- Kiss tedious manual tracking goodbye. Use this powerhouse tool to track picks, input scores, and declare winners automatically.
- Focus on the fun (and bragging rights, of course!) while your bracket manages itself.
NFL Playoff Bracket Forms
Direct the pool entrants to download this year’s NFL Playoff Bracket forms for free from our goodies page our or send out the NFL Playoff Bracket forms to anyone who you wish to include in your NFL Playoff Pool. Ask all participants to enter their Name (23 letters or less) where indicated on the form (Cell B1) and make a selection for each game using the available drop‐down menus in the blue cells. Make sure to fill in all of the blue cell selections! Based on Wildcard winner seeding, the teams will automatically adjust for the Divisional rounds. Also fill out the Tie-Breaker by filling in the total COMBINED score of the Super Bowl. For example, if you think the final score will be 24-14 then your tie breaker guess should be 38.
NFL Playoff Bracket Manager
Enable Editing & Macros:
When opening the file, make sure you enable the macros and choose a trusted location to avoid the pesky pink “learn more” banner (Having issues doing this? Check out our short video on how to handle it)
Selecting Playoff Game Winners (this comes in handy later):
When the Bracket Manager file is opened, go to the sheet entitled “Winning Bracket” (look at the bottom of the workbook for sheet names). After the winners of each game are determined, select the game winners in each round, using the available drop-down menus in the blue cells. Please do not add/remove rows from this spreadsheet or the Bracket Manager may not calculate results correctly.
Using the NFL Playoff Bracket Manager
Once you start receiving completed Bracket Selection forms back from your friends, we recommend saving them in a centralized folder/location. We also recommend that each file be given a unique name (possibly the submitters’ name) so that you can easily identify each bracket form. When you are ready to input the individual brackets into the “NFL Playoff Pool Scoring” sheet, click on the football image at the top of the spreadsheet which looks like the following:
When you click the football (as long as you have “enabled macros” as noted above), a pop-up should appear. We call this console the NFL Playoff Pool Helper (see image below)
The available options (buttons) on the NFL Playoff Pool Helper are as follows:
Input User Forms
Click on this button to add your friends’ bracket selections to the NFL Playoff Bracket Manager. Remember, the NFL Playoff Bracket files will need to be saved before they can be uploaded to the Bracket Manager. To upload a ballot form, simply:
- Click the “Input User Forms” button – A file dialog box will
appear (pictured right), allowing you to find and upload the brackets on your computer - Select the bracket(s) that you wish to upload by either double-
clicking on the file(s); or highlighting the file(s) and clicking “Open”. - Doing this will automatically add a new sheet(s)/tab(s) to the NFL Playoff Bracket Manager workbook, containing the person’s bracket selections.
Please Note: If you have already uploaded a person’s bracket (according to the name listed in the bracket in cell B1, which must be 23 letters or less), another pop-up will appear asking if you want to overwrite the existing data in the bracket. (You would use this option if someone changed their answers and resubmitted their sheet to you.) Select “Yes” to overwrite or “No” to keep the existing data for the person listed.
Correlate Results
This button will update the “NFL Playoff Pool Scoring” sheet to display all selections from the uploaded brackets. It will also calculate your NFL Playoff Pool Champion!
- Once you have uploaded all of the NFL Playoff Brackets (using the “Input User Forms” button), clicking the “Correlate Results” button will pull the selections from the uploaded brackets and display them in rows to right of the “Winners” Column.
- As the NFL Playoff game winners are announced and you enter them into the “Winning Bracket” sheet (see “Selecting Playoff Game Winners” in section above), click the “Correlate Results” button to calculate a point total for each participant. You can run this option as many times as you’d like to update the point totals throughout the playoffs (i.e. you can calculate and re-calculate the point totals after each round as the game winners are announced!).
Exit
This allows you to view the list without the NFL Playoff Pool Helper. You can always bring the Helper back by clicking on the football at the top of the sheet.
Scoring Methodology
Feel free to change/tailor the Point System to your liking. You can do by this by changing the applicable points for each round on the “NFL Playoff Pool Scoring” sheet (column B) within the NFL Playoff Bracket Manager workbook.
Notes:
It is recommended that all changes to the NFL Playoff Pool Scoring sheet (except for selecting the point totals for each round), be done using the NFL Playoff Pool Helper; otherwise the results may not be as expected.
It is recommended that you save this spreadsheet before closing or your work will be lost. Tie-Breakers only adjust players that are tied for 1st place.
