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"To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Points Quick Reference Guide

Specific Data-Entry Steps

Enter Student Names & Other Data

à    Last, First

à    No Nicknames! Please!

à    First or Middle name, not both. Put in whichever the student goes by.

Look it up on Zangle! It’s all there!

à    Enter the student's Grade (9, 10,11, or 12), and "Start Date - Class" for students new to your course.

Copying Student Names and other data from another worksheet...

You might, especially at the beginning of the year, want to copy existing data from the previous year's points reports.

The actual file that this data is in may change (ask for it) but the way to copy is going to be the same:

1. After you have your Excel file open,

2. Open the Excel file containing the student data you need.

3. Select that row by clicking on the number to the left
   :
   
    

4. Click Copy, it will cause "crawling ants" (you'll see!)
    

5. Select an open cell in column A at the end of your data:
   
   
    

6. Click Paste:
   
   
    

7. And there you have the correct data from that student's past!

AutoFill

AutoFill is a timesaver. You can copy a piece of data to a great number of cells by simply clicking and dragging. The example below is for the "Start Date - Class" but you can use it for the Advisor initials, the Student's Name, your Name, the Course name, the Student's grade in school, or anything that needs to be repeated. Another advantage is it guarantees accuracy - enter it right once and the copies will be identical.

Select and Enter the student's start date in the first two cells of the "Start Date - Class" column one at a time. They are both shown selected below:

  Select those two cells and then point the cursor at the tiny square in the lower right corner of your selection.

Most of the time your cursor looks like a fat plus sign when you are on the Excel worksheet à

BUT when you put it right on the tiny square, it turns to a skinny plus sign when it’s ready for you to proceed à

This is when you Click and Drag – When your cursor is the skinny plus, Click on the little square, and then Drag all the way to the bottom of the data in that column only or for as far as you want to copy.

The correct date should display all the way.

Do the same thing for Advisor initials, the Student's Name, your Name, the Course name, the Student's grade in school.

AutoFilter -

Display only one course or group of courses at a time

This is how to Turn On AutoFilter...

  Click in Cell A1! 

Click on the Data Tab > Filter, then the > Filter Button:

 The downward-pointing arrows appearing in the bottom of the Heading line cells confirming you did it right.

  This is how to See Only One Course for data entry:

   ► Click on the little Down-arrow that is embedded in the Course title cell,

   ► Uncheck the (Select All) box.

► Check the box of the course or courses you want displayed

You now have a list of only certain students - those in a particular course:

This is How to see all courses that have a common theme:

You may want to see all Math courses and only math courses.

A general listing:

Turn on the AutoFilter and

► Click on the Down-Arrow

then

► Click Text Filters

The Custom menu opens up.

Choose what is appropriate in your case, but for this example we choose Begins With...

The Custom AutoFilter box opens...

And we type Math:

and Click OK.

► Just courses with a name that begins with Math will display,
ß like this

            This is why you want all your courses to be named with a beginning word like “Math,” “Eng,” “Soc” or “Art”
                        – it allows you to sort them together for easier data entry or display.

Record Credits and Half-credits

When you enter a “100” in the “Total Pts - Class” cell, Date! appears in the Credit cell of the same student:

You then click on that cell and enter the date you wrote the credit:

When you have a Half-Credit to record, enter a “Y” in the 1/2 CT cell of the student who earned it.
Half-> appears in the Credit cell of the same student:

You then enter the date for the half credit in the Comments cell for that student.

Excel will usually change the date format to a default date format,
so you can enter “10-9” and Excel will likely change it to “10/9” in the Date Credit Written cell, or 9-Oct in the Comment cell, automatically.
 See screenshots above.

Changing a student’s Status – Holds and Drops

Students may drop out of school, or simply out of a particular course.

If they have dropped your course, enter an “H” in the status cell for that student in the appropriate course to indicate that student is on “Hold” for that course:

- Most students who are on hold have had a schedule change and will be back in that course, so you need to Hold on to their points.

If a student has dropped out of Bijou , you will do nothing until the front office has contacted all teachers with the news that a student has withdrawn from Bijou.

When you have been so notified, you can enter a “D” into the status cell for that student:

  Please do NOT delete these records. They will be placed into a specific sheet on the Block Reports
  and will be removed from your file after the next Block begins.

AutoFilter to hide Drops and Holds      [Still a 2003 example]

Using AutoFilter (see above) you can sort those Drop and Hold students out for your weekly Points Charts like this -

Click on the Down Arrow for the Status column.

Click (Blanks) à

All Ds and Hs will be hidden.

Click All to show them again.

- You can also click D or H to see just those categories.

You can hide those students and still show specific courses as described above…

This is showing only CompApps students:

And now we hide the Holds including the student Highwaist, Dred, and Row 58 is hidden, but not gone:

Creating Charts

Add a Chart – BUT FIRST…

Make sure your screen is maximized!

 Frequently I see a screen like this, and the person to whom it belongs has said they cannot find their tabs at the bottom:

There are 2 places to look here.

Notice there are 2 different Xs in the upper right corner.

This means that while the main Excel window is maximized,

 the Workbook window is not.

You want to have the Workbook window maximized, too.

You can’t see the tabs at the bottom because of this.

ß Look closely at the upper-right corners.

The upper group of 3 little boxes shows what looks like 2 little pages, in between the – and the X,

which means that the main Excel window is maximized.

The lower group of 3 little boxes shows what looks like 1 little page in the same spot.

This means that your Workbook window is NOT maximized.

You want to click on the single little page button in the lower window, which is your Workbook window,

so that you can Restore it to full size, or Maximize it.

 When you do, your screen will look similar to the next screenshot:

Note that you can see the tabs at the bottom of the screen:

  And that in the upper right corner, there are some changes:

The same symbols are all there, but the lower ones, the ones for your Workbook window,

 look a little less like buttons, and the middle one is 2 little pages now.

That means that your Workbook window is now maximized, and all your tabs should be visible, or at least findable.

Now it’s time to actually

Add a NEW Chart when you have too many students for the existing number of charts…

Have your charts numbered, like Chart1, Chart2, etc., like the example above.

Right click on your latest chart’s tab at the bottom of the screen, and click on Move or Copy:              

In the Move or Copy  dialog box, Click the Create a copy box, then scroll down

in the Before sheet: window and click the spot where you want to place the new chart, then click OK.

A new chart tab with the same name PLUS a (2) after it will appear where you intended it to.

Change the name (in this case to Chart10) by right-clicking on the tab and click on Rename,

which is right above Move or Copy as shown above.

Select the old number and the (2), replace with the new number (in this case 10):

Chart the Right Students

The new chart has the same students as the one you just copied it from.

You have to change the Source Data so that you can show the extra students on the new chart.

Right-click somewhere in the plot area and click Source Data…

The main data table should open up with the Source Data dialog box open in it:

The data you are interested in is in the selected window in the middle of the Source Data dialog box, the Data range: window:

[Here, Jack! refers to the worksheet with the data you are charting (your name instead, of course); $E$1 and $E$122:$E$136 refer to the cells with students’ names and their label; $N$1:$P$1 refers to the labels for the data you will chart. The data references are hidden here; you can see them on the next page - $N$122:$P$136 refers to the data range of the actual data]

Behind the Source Data dialog box, you can see the data and what I call “Crawling Ants”

They show the data that is referred to in the Data range: window. In this example it is showing the data is read from cells E122 to E136, and you can’t see all of it at once.

You CAN scroll down to find the end of the data you want to plot on your new chart:

In this example, the new
students’ data go all the way
to row 149, 14 new rows in all.

You want to change those numbers in the Data range: window so that your new chart is showing all the new student data.

Here you have clicked in the Data range: window
and the cursor I bar is in the number “122”

Since the old range is 122:136, you want the change to start at 137. How far you go is up to you, but in this case we’ll go to 151.

 [See the rest of the references from the previous page?]

However, the row numbers show up in 2 spots. Here is the second location, further along in the string:

  And you need to change them in both places:

  Then,

Click OK in the Source Data dialog box.

You will immediately be back in the new chart (here Chart10) and should see that your student data is up-to-date on the chart:

Sort Data  (for Windows 2003 - I have yet to update this for 2007. But once you click the right button it's easy enough to figure out)

You may want to simply sort your data after entering new students.

For clarity, you should probably do this with the AutoFilter turned off.

As shown earlier, Click on Data > Filter > AutoFilter

It acts like a toggle, and if AutoFilter was on it will now be turned off.

To sort, click in cell A1

-or-

If you have deleted any data in rows, you need to go to the last student’s Comment cell and click and drag to cell A1. (If there are blank rows Excel may not select what you want to sort correctly)

Click on Data > Sort…

This opens the Sort dialog box:

For consistency, we need to all -

  Sort by Student

Then by Course

Default settings should be Ascending, shown on the right,
and Header row near the bottom under My list has   

Then click OK

08/25/2009