Filling out a Ballot with Google Sheets for mobile

Note: these instructions are for Google Sheets on a mobile platform (iPhone, iPad, Android, etc).
For instructions for the desktop/laptop version, go here.

Screenshots are from Google Sheets on an iPad. If you’re using an Android or other device, your screen may differ slightly.

It’s highly suggested that you use a laptop or desktop to do the poll, as it makes things much easier. Using a tablet is preferable to a phone, especially if you have a long list of coasters you’ve ridden.

Download the ballot and save it to your Google Drive, then open it in Google Sheets.

You’ll be presented with a big list of coasters in spreadsheet format:

Pinch-down the table until you can see all the columns from Rank to ID.

There are eight columns. The “Local Name” column contains the non-English name that a coaster is known as in its home country, which makes it easier to identify for the voters in those countries. The ID column is used by the tabulation program. DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING in that column. FYI, if you tap the number in that column, it will take you to the RCDB entry, which could help jog your memory if you can’t recall the coaster. The ballot is initially sorted by Country, then Park.

That’s a LOT of coasters to deal with!

Step 1. Delete stuff you haven’t ridden

It’s likely that there are quite a few that you haven’t ridden and maybe even entire countries you haven’t visited. Let’s get rid of those first.

Find the first country you haven’t been to, let’s say Australia. Highlight all of Australia’s data by tapping once on the first Australia line number (2)…

then dragging the dot to the last Australia line.

Australia’s data will be highlighted like this:

Keep doing this for every country you haven’t been to.

It’s quite probable that you’ve not been to every park in the countries you’ve visited. The ballot is sorted by country, then park - so now that you’ve deleted the countries you haven’t visited, it’s easy to do the same with parks you haven’t visited. Let’s do that now.

Lastly, it’s also probable that you haven’t been on every coaster at every park you’ve been to. Parks build new rides all the time and there are likely some you’ll need to delete off your ballot. Let’s do that now.

Done it? Great! Your ballot should now ONLY contain those coasters you’ve ridden.

Step 2. Remove “No” from the RIDDEN column

Time to get rid of that list of “No”s in the Ridden column. Tap the “No” at the top of the column and then drag the blue dot to the bottom to highlight the entire column (you can also do this in stages).

Notice: If you’re filling out your wood ballot and you don’t consider RMC wood coasters (such as Wildfire or Outlaw Run) to be “wood coasters” and don’t want to rank them, simply delete them from your ballot at this stage. DO NOT give them a low ranking as a “protest vote” - that’s immature and will negatively skew the rankings. Don’t be that person. The poll should be a measure of how good the ride is, not whether or not you think it should be included on a wood poll. Got it? Good. Moving on.

You can leave that column blank, or you can put “Yes” or “Y” or some other such thing in there, it doesn’t matter. You can even put in the year that you rode it or the number of times that you rode it, if you’d like. As long as it no longer says “No” then that coaster will get counted.

Step 3. Ranking

Now comes the fun part: RANK THOSE COASTERS! Simply tap the cell with the “0”, delete the “0” and type the ranking for that coaster.

From time to time, you can re-sort the sheet by rank by tapping the A column, tapping it again, and selecting SORT A-Z. That will put the coasters you’ve ranked in order at the top and the coasters you haven’t ranked yet at the bottom. It’s an easy way to make sure you haven’t missed one.

And that’s it! Continue ranking until you’ve ranked all your coasters, then save your ballot and email it to editor@ellocoaster.com

Include your name, city (and state, if in the US), and country. That information will never be shared with anyone.

Got a really long list, or can’t figure out how to rank middle-tier coasters? There’s an easy way to deal with that. Click here.