You can download your grades to Excel as a backup of your Grade Center. This tutorial will show you how to export your grades from Blackboard in a tab-delimited format (this is the Blackboard default) into Excel, how to save the file in Excel as a .txt file and how to upload the .txt file to your Grade Center.

Make sure that Edit Mode is ON.

Downloading and Exporting your Grades

1. From the Control Panel, click Grade Center. Click Full Grade Center.
   
   
   
   
2. In the upper right corner of the Grade Center, click the Work Offline button. Click Download.
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. On the Download Grades page, under the first section (Data), select “Full Grade Center.”
   
   
   
   
4. Under the Options section, make sure the “Delimiter Type” is set to “Tab.” This will download your grades as a *.txt file and allow you to open it in Microsoft Excel.
   
   
   
   
5. Click Submit.
   
   
   
6. A  file containing the Grade Center data will be created. A new screen will appear; click on the DOWNLOAD button to choose where to save the file.
   
   
   
   a. If you choose to “Open with” from the Download button, your file will open with Microsoft Excel. Remember to Save As and make sure the file is saved as Unicode (*.txt).
   
   b. If you click “Save File” from the Download button, you will need to open the .xls file that you have saved.  If you make changes in the file and wish to upload those changes to your Grade Center make sure to save the file in the Unicode format. Go to Save As and choose the (*.txt) extension.
   
   
   
   

   NOTE: Upon opening the file in Excel, you may get a pop up stating “The file you are trying to open is in a different format than specified by the file extension. Verify that the file is not corrupted and is from a trusted source before opening the file. Do you want to open the file now?” Click Yes to continue.
   
   

   When you are saving the *.txt file, a pop-up may appear stating the file “may contain features that are not compatible with Unicode Text. Do you want to keep the workbook in this format?” Select Yes to continue.

Uploading your Excel Spreadsheet into Blackboard

If you are planning to Upload your Grade Center make no changes in either the order of students or the column headers in the file you downloaded . Blackboard needs the order of students and the names of columns (information in the column header) to match in order to properly upload the Grade Center.

While there are a number of reasons for working outside the Grade Center and then uploading grades to the Grade Center some of the most common reasons for Uploading Grades are:

• Data in your Grade Center has been lost and you wish to restore the data.
  
  
• You engage in calculations for grades that are not available in the Blackboard Grade Center.
  
  
• You prefer to enter grades in Excel rather than the Blackboard Grade Center.

Whatever your reasons for working outside the Grade Center, or “ working offline”,  the instructions for uploading grades are given below:

1. From the Control Panel, click Grade Center. Click Full Grade Center.
   
   
   
   

2. In the upper right corner of the Grade Center, click the Work Offline button. Click Upload.
   
   

3. Under Choose File > Attach local file, click Browse to locate the spreadsheet you would like to upload .The file must be in Unicode (*.txt) format. Click Open, then Submit.
   
   
   
   

4. Choose “Tab” as the Delimiter type.

5. If you have made no changes in  your Grade Center When the Upload Grades Confirmation page opens, make sure that all the columns you want imported into the Grade Center match.  Click Submit.

   NOTE: If you have made no changes in the Grade Center file you downloaded your screen should look like the one below with all items having a green check-marked box in the Match column.
   
   
   
   

   If you have made changes to one or more columns in the downloaded Grade Center file you will see a screen that looks like the one below in which any Grade Center item that has changes, in this case, Sport of Choice –Gender, has a marked check box to the left of the item in the Upload column and a listing of all the changes to that item in the Data Preview column. If you want those changes to appear in your Blackboard Grade Center leave that box, and the boxes for any other items to which you have made changes you want reflected in the Grade Center, checked. Then click on Submit.
   
   

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