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Creating Custom Form Letters and Reports
You can use the Export to Text capability of Gradekeeper together with the mail merge capability of Microsoft Word to create custom form letters or reports.
- First, export the items you want in your report from Gradekeeper:
- Choose Export to Text from the File menu
- Choose the items you want in your report
- Click the Export button
- Choose a name for the text file
- Click the Save button
Next, start Microsoft Excel. Choose Open from the File menu and choose the text file you created when you exported from Gradekeeper. The Text Import Wizard will appear:
Choose a delimited file type starting at row 1 and click Next:
Choose the Tab delimiter and click Next:
If you are including any percents in your reports, you will need to tell Excel to treat those fields as text, otherwise it will convert them to decimals in your report. Click the column for each percent field and choose the text column data format.
Excel will now import the text. You will need to insert a blank row and add appropriate headers for each column. You can do this by selecting the entire first row by clicking the row number and choosing Rows from the Insert menu. You will also need to insert a new column for the email addresses for each student. You can do this by selecting the entire first column by clicking the column letter and choosing Columns from the Insert menu.
Headers need to be a single word without hyphens.
If you will be sending this form letter by email, you need to enter an email address for each student. You should have the email addresses you want to use saved in another Excel document. You can then copy and paste those email addresses into this document. When you are done, your document should look something like this:
Save the document and exit Excel.
Next, start Microsoft Word. Create a new document if one has not already been created. From the Letters and Mailings submenu in the Tools menu, choose Mail Merge. The Mail Merge Wizard will appear:
Choose email messages and click next at the bottom.
Choose to use the current document and click next at the bottom.
Choose to use an existing list and click browse to select the Excel spreadsheet you created earlier.
Make sure that the box at the bottom is checked and choose the table within your Excel spreadsheet, then click OK.
You should see all your students in this list. Click OK.
You can now write the body of your email and insert fields that will be replaced by the information you exported from Gradekeeper. To insert a field, click More items:
Choose the field you want to insert and click Insert. When you have finished writing your email, it should look something like this:
When you are ready to send your emails, click Next.
You can preview the emails for various recipients. When you are ready to send the emails, click Next.
Click Electronic Mail to send the emails:
When you click OK, the emails will be sent immediately from Word. Note that you must have Outlook set up with a valid email account and a valid SMTP server to send the emails.
You can save the document you created with the body of your email, as well as the spreadsheet you created. You can replace the data within the spreadsheet for new reports.