Filling out a ballot with Numbers for Mac

These instructions are for Numbers on Mac OS. For the mobile version instructions, head here.

Download the ballot, then open it in Numbers.

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

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. You can also click that ID number and it will open your browser to the RCDB listing for that coaster. However, DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING in that column.

Now we need to make that first row a header row, so it won’t move around while we do things. Click somewhere in the spreadsheet, then click the number ‘1’ all the way to the left of the word ‘Rank’. Select “Convert to Header Row” on the drop-down menu.

Step 1. Delete the stuff you haven’t ridden (opt)

If you have a very short list, you might not want to bother with this step. You can skip down to Step 2.

That’s a LOT of coasters to deal with!

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. The ballot is initially sorted by Country, then Park.

Find the first country you haven’t been to, let’s say Australia. Highlight all of Australia’s data by clicking once on the line number of the first Australia line (2), then hold SHIFT and click the last line number (3). Australia’s data will be highlighted like this:

Now, right-click the line number. (If you have a two-button mouse. You can CTRL-click if you don’t. Or you can set your trackpad preferences to two-finger click. Or whatever you normally do.) This will open up a pop-up menu. Select DELETE SELECTED ROWS.

It’s 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, using the same method you used to delete countries.

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, using the same method.

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. Click the “No” at the top of the column and then scroll down and SHIFT-click the “No” at the bottom to highlight the entire column. Then press the DELETE key. That will erase all the “No”s without deleting the column itself.

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 place your cursor in the cell with the “0” and type the ranking for that coaster. You can move up and down the list with the arrow keys, your mouse, or whatever method works best for you.

From time to time, it’s helpful to re-sort the list by rank. That will put your coasters in order of rank so you can better see what you’ve done and where other coasters should place. To do this, click any cell on your list, then click ORGANIZE in the upper-right corner, then SORT, then select RANK from the “Add a column” menu.

Now all of the coasters you haven’t ranked yet will be at the bottom and your ranked coasters will be in order at the top. This makes it easy to make sure you haven’t accidentally 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.