vba - Looking to build a lineup builder for the site draftkings using excel

Question

Why excel? Well excel is what is used to import the player salaries.

Now I need the spreadsheet to do the following.

1. Create teams within salary cap.
2. Include/exclude specific player function
3. Build multiple lineups from a selected list of players within the cap

Can I do all of this with excel? or do I need to know excel vba as well?

Also which parts of excel or if necessary excel vba must I need to know to code such a thing? Also if someone could give me a short summary of the steps needed to hypothetically make such a thing it would be great. Thanks.

Answer 1

I'm posting this as a reply because it is too long for a comment window.
Just because Excel has a grid doesn't mean that it is fit for data storage and data handling, on the contrary.

What you typically want to do is create a transparent structure that guarantees the integrity of your data and that allows dynamic portability when needed one day.
Excel is meant to be a spreadsheet, people forget this all the time or they just avoid the topic: although Excel has a grid, doesn't mean that it is a good fit for reliable data storage. It is not even the least complex way of storing data, depending on the amount of VBA that you need to manage all these data and the gates that you unnecessarily open towards potential bugs.

This is why an RDBMS is what will fit your needs, in this case Access would be a good option as it preserves your data integrity if you get the table structure right and it executes a lot of tasks for you that you should otherwise need to program yourself to protect the integrity of your data.
Although you can perform SQL on spreadsheets too, note that Excel does NOT cover related tables (what you typically seem to need for building your teams and salary limits), so what many Excel programmers will typically do is to create their own code to make this cross-table data storage thing work.
Don't do this if the alternative is available and much more reliable and future-proof.

At first sight, it seems that you won't even need any VBA; I'm not sure of all the things you want to do, but my first impression is that you can manage everything with SQL syntax and stored queries in MS Access. You can import Excel sheets into Access if you get their format right so that should not be a problem.

Once your data is stored there, rest assured that you have made your life a lot easier.