Backup Grade Center to Microsoft Excel

There is a three-part process we recommended that instructors complete on their Blackboard courses following the end of each semester:

1. Back up Grade Center to Microsoft Excel
2. Archive Course
3. Bulk Delete Users

In this month's blog series, as we focus on topics for Ending a Semester in Blackboard, we'll take a look at each part and its purpose, as well as how to prepare your courses for the next semester, over the next few weeks.  

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Backing up your Blackboard Grade Center to Microsoft Excel will allow you to have full access outside of Blackboard to the data saved to the Grade Center, should any questions arise over student grades (once the students have been deleted), without the need to restore an entire archived course.  The Blackboard Grade Center can be backed up to Excel at any point during the semester, but we recommend it especially at the end of the semester, once all grades have been entered and updated.

Update all Grade Center cells

• Before downloading the Grade Center to Excel, ensure that all grades are entered for all students and that zeros are entered for missing assignments so that the final grade is accurately calculated

Download file to Excel

• Once the entire Grade Center is updated, click the Work Offline button in the upper-right area of the full Grade Center
• Select the Download option

• Click Submit on the next screen, as the default options should work best
• When the Download Grades window appears, click the Download button
  
• Depending on whether you are using Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, take the following steps:
• Mozilla Firefox: A popup window will appear to indicate that the Grade Center will open in Microsoft Excel - select Open With Microsoft Excel, and click OK

• Google Chrome: A button will appear in the lower left corner above the start button - click this button to open the Excel document

Save the Excel File

• Within Excel select File > Save As
• Provide a file name for the document - it's helpful to include both the course name and semester (i.e., ENGL110_Fall2015)
• Select a location to save your Excel file 
• H:/drive - if on campus - or jump drive or home computer
• It may help to start a new folder called "Grades" (if you don't already have one)
• Change the Save as type option from Unicode text (*.txt) to Excel Workbook (.xlsx) so that you can read the file within Excel  (this step is extremely important so that you are able to read the file in the future)

• Click Save
• Close the Excel program

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View the Ending a Semester guide for a complete overview and step-by-step instructions for the entire process.

For additional assistance with End-of-Semester Blackboard tasks, contact the TLC at tlc@icc.edu or (309) 694-8908, or visit us in room 240A on the East Peoria campus.

Visit our ICC Blackboard blog again in the next couple of weeks when we'll cover steps for archiving your Blackboard courses and bulk deleting users from the course.