BC old entries finder
ver 0.88
This spreadsheet will generate a webpage to help with searching for previous beauty contest entries for a pet. It will look for every possible week it could have an image displayed and successful urls will display the entry.
get it here
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Go to File > Make a copy, to make the spreadsheet editable on your google/gmail account.
2. Add your pet's name. It must be spelled correctly, including any capital letters.
You can also change any of the other yellow cells if you wish to adjust the look of the final page, or you can leave them as default.
3. Select the entire D column by clicking on the D at the top of the spreadsheet.
Copy and paste into a new text file (you can use Notepad on Windows or Textedit on Mac).
4. Save and name the file whateveryouwant.html and open it in any browser.
Give it time to load, especially if you're searching a wide range of dates
Alternatively, you can also File > Save As the page from your browser, choosing whichever "complete webpage" option your browser offers, to save all the successfully found images into a folder onto your computer.
Some browsers will add a bunch of junk .html files for all the urls it couldn't find, but you can sort everything inside of the "_files" folder by kind / type to find the images all together, move them somewhere else, and then delete the remaining folder and junk files.
2. Add your pet's name. It must be spelled correctly, including any capital letters.
You can also change any of the other yellow cells if you wish to adjust the look of the final page, or you can leave them as default.
3. Select the entire D column by clicking on the D at the top of the spreadsheet.
Copy and paste into a new text file (you can use Notepad on Windows or Textedit on Mac).
4. Save and name the file whateveryouwant.html and open it in any browser.
Give it time to load, especially if you're searching a wide range of dates
*
. Once it's finished searching you can scroll through and see what it's found.
*
Searching the widest range of dates possible, from 2000 to 2021 will total a little under 3000 urls to search! Usually takes less than 4 minutes to complete when I test it.Alternatively, you can also File > Save As the page from your browser, choosing whichever "complete webpage" option your browser offers, to save all the successfully found images into a folder onto your computer.
Some browsers will add a bunch of junk .html files for all the urls it couldn't find, but you can sort everything inside of the "_files" folder by kind / type to find the images all together, move them somewhere else, and then delete the remaining folder and junk files.
NOTES / TROUBLESHOOTING :
While it works, this is not that great a solution, and I'm currently working out a less messy way to search for past entries.
One problem that can occur is if your internet connection drops out even for a few seconds at the wrong moment there is a small chance it may miss some entries.
After checking over the results (and saving the images/urls as you like), it can be worth refreshing the .html page and letting it do a second search (especially if your internet tends to be unstable). On occasion it can find 1 or 2 entries that failed the first time.
There is a cutoff for how far back Neopets is still hosting past entries that didn't place, so you'll cease to see non-placing entries any further back than Sep 2014 (last I checked, they may delete newer entries periodically in future).
There is a period from 18th Dec 2015 back to 13th Nov 2015 where even the winning entries appear to be lost (as can be seen when searching back through http://www.neopets.com/beauty/winners.phtml
These older entries may simple be hosted at a different address. If you have any info please contact me at krawkhead@gmail.com, I'd love it if we could manage to find them.
If your .html file doesn't open correctly, check your computer hasn't added a sneaky (sometimes hidden) page.html.txt to the end of the filename.
You may need to check the file's properties if your system hides file extensions like .txt. Select the file and on Windows right-click and select Properties, on Mac press Cmd I or go to File > Get Info.
One problem that can occur is if your internet connection drops out even for a few seconds at the wrong moment there is a small chance it may miss some entries.
After checking over the results (and saving the images/urls as you like), it can be worth refreshing the .html page and letting it do a second search (especially if your internet tends to be unstable). On occasion it can find 1 or 2 entries that failed the first time.
There is a cutoff for how far back Neopets is still hosting past entries that didn't place, so you'll cease to see non-placing entries any further back than Sep 2014 (last I checked, they may delete newer entries periodically in future).
There is a period from 18th Dec 2015 back to 13th Nov 2015 where even the winning entries appear to be lost (as can be seen when searching back through http://www.neopets.com/beauty/winners.phtml
These older entries may simple be hosted at a different address. If you have any info please contact me at krawkhead@gmail.com, I'd love it if we could manage to find them.
If your .html file doesn't open correctly, check your computer hasn't added a sneaky (sometimes hidden) page.html.txt to the end of the filename.
You may need to check the file's properties if your system hides file extensions like .txt. Select the file and on Windows right-click and select Properties, on Mac press Cmd I or go to File > Get Info.
The pet searched for in the examples isn't mine, just one I knew had a lot of cool old entries and would be a great test subject for this spreadsheet.
