Downloading Your Grade Center to Excel

There are several possible reasons why you'd want to download your Grade Center from Blackboard to Excel:

• You need to do some complicated calculations in computing final grades that go beyond the capabilities of the Grade Center;
• You want to make a backup copy of your Grade Center, before (or after) making significant changes to student grades within Blackboard;
• You want to make an archive copy of your Grade Center at the end of the semester, so that you have your own (printable) record of the grades you gave your students throughout the course.

The Blackboard server itself is backed up nightly, and we create an archive copy of all courses that have been changed in the previous day. Even so, all of the reasons listed above are significant ones, and we recommend that all faculty members who use Blackboard's Grade Center download a copy of that Grade Center to their hard drives at least at the end of the semester, and preferably periodically throughout the semester, so that you have a personal copy of the individual grades that you handed out during the semester. We also recommend that you print out that Excel file, so that you have a copy in a non-digital format. To download your Grade Center from Blackboard:

1. You can access your Blackboard course by logging in to myBucknell (opens in new window) and by clicking on the relevant course listing in the My Blackboard "gadget" on that page or by logging in directly to Blackboard (opens in new window).

2. If you are on the main My Blackboard page in Blackboard, you can access your course by finding it in the Custom My Courses module in the middle column on that page and then clicking on the link for the course:

   

3. You'll first need to make sure that the Edit Mode switch at the top-right corner of the page is in the On position, which it should be by default. If the Edit Mode switch is in the "Off" position, you need to click on it to turn editing mode on:

   

4. In the new Blackboard 9.1 Control Panel (on the left-hand side of the page, under the Course Navigation Menu), click on the two rightward-facing arrows on the right edge of the Grade Center link, which will take you straight to the Grade Center for your course:

   

5. On the Grade Center page, on the far right side, near the top of the page, you should see a "Work Offline" button. Put your mouse over the button, and then click on the "Download" link:

   

6. Blackboard will take you to a "Download Grades" page. What you want to download will depend on why you have come to this page. If you are creating a backup copy of your Grade Center, you'll want to keep the default choice of "Full Grade Center" for the data that you want to download. If you just want the list of users for your course, because you want to keep your own gradebook in Excel, you can choose to download "User Information Only"

7. In the "Options" section, we recommend that you create a Tab-delimited file, which opens more easily in Excel.

8. Generally, you won't need to include hidden information, so your selections should look like this:

   

9. With Blackboard 9.1, you have the possibility of saving the downloaded Grade Center file to the "Content Collection", which is the Course Files area for the course. Since you want to save the file outside of Blackboard, you can just ignore Section 3 (Save Location) and scroll down to the bottom of the page to click on the button to send your request to the server.

10. As the instructions on the page suggest, click on the button to download the file to your computer. What you do from this point depends on your operating system (Mac or Windows), the browser you are using, the file type you chose in Step 8 above, and your purpose for downloading the Grade Center. If you are using a Mac, your browser will save the file to your default download folder (usually the desktop). For PC users who are just saving a backup copy of the Grade Center, you can choose the option from the File Download dialog box to save the file to your hard drive. Firefox will save that file to the Dowloands folder specified in its options. Internet Explorer will allow you to choose where you save the file. If you are using Internet Explorer, navigate to the appropriate folder on your hard drive where you want to save the file. You can either accept the default file name that Blackboard provides (listing the course name, the type of download, and the date and time of the download), or you can change the name to something a bit more meaningful to you, and then click on the Save button. Blackboard will save the Grade Center download file to your hard drive in the folder (and with the file name) you selected:

    

    If you are using Firefox, the browser will open a Downloads window after it has downloaded the file. You can right-click on the file name in the Downloads window and click on the "Open Containing Folder" to find out where the file was saved:

    

11. Please note that Blackboard saves the file with values only. The calculations done by the Grade Center (total, weighted total, etc.) are performed within Blackboard; in Excel, you see the results of the calculations, but the downloaded file does not contain the formulas that produced the results.

    Please note as well that if you chose Tab-delimited as the file type and open the file in Excel, you may get a warning that the format of the file doesn't match the file extension, since it is a tab-delimted file but Blackboard saved it with the *.xls dot extension. You can just click on the "Yes" button to open the file.

12. We also recommend that you print out a copy of your exported Grade Center, especially if you are using this as an archive copy of your semester's grades. If you have a large Grade Center with many items, you may need to use the Page Layout tab in Excel to change the orientation to Landscape and to make other changes so that your file fits well on the page.

Last revised April 20, 2011 .  Please send questions or comments to itec@bucknell.edu.