trying to think the best way to explain it to you, the0.
lets start with this... what i use is a function called RCHgetwebdata.
I think if you google "Excel RCH"it will get you to this guys yahoo page (his name is randy hammerlink)
he creates a bunch of different custom functions for excel and i think all have a prefix of smf or rch.
His purpose and most of those who use his functions are to pull stock market data for analysis (childs play compared to the serious stuff we do here, right?)
but his sutff is free to use and he is quite helpful. im not sure what the heck he gets out of it or if its just that easy to him.
the main one i have used is rchgetwebdata. but the only way i know to get it is to downlaod his whole pack of add-ins. to do that you have to join his yahoogroup i think (there is no fee for any of this) and then follow a some directions as to how to get your excel to recognize those new custom functions. i guess its a little tedious the first time, but it seems like you like diving into the data like me and im guessing you would use it alot. oh also if you dont have a yahoo username then i think you have to do that, but again its free.
this rchgetwebata is just like any other function once you get it in there. it will pull the entire web page of data into a cell. then you just have to use =find( to find specific words that get you to the right spot, and then =mid( to pull out the exact name or school or record or whatever you want.
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hope that makes some sense. let me know if it doesnt. if you can get the addins downloaded and working, i can email you some examples of how i use it.
one limitation it does have is that it will only pull 1,000 web pages and then you get an error message. thats easy enough to reset, but it makes things a little trickier if you are doing all schools all worlds (close to 10,000 i think) if you are only doing one world and just referencing one page per school, it works great