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Once you download your Grade Center, you can work on your Blackboard Grade Center on your computer and upload the edited spreadsheet back into Blackboard to allow students to see their current grades.

We recommend that you first download your Grade Center to ensure that the data matches when you re-upload the edited grades.

How to Upload a File to the Grade Center

  1. Go to your course.
  2. Click on Grade Center and then Full Grade Center.
  3. Click Work Offline in the top left of the window and select Upload.
    Click Work Offline and then select Upload.
  4. Click Browse Local Files. Files are uploaded from your computer, or if available, from the Content Collection.
    Click Browse Local Files
  5. Select the delimiter type: Comma, Tab, or Auto. Choosing Auto attempts to automatically detect the delimiter used in the selected file.  We recommend Auto.
    Choose Delimiter
  6. Select Submit to upload the selected file.
    click submit
  7. On the Upload Grades Confirmation page, review the list of data from the file to be uploaded. Clear the check boxes for any data to be excluded from the upload. Using this method, you can upload only the columns of data you want from the file.  Review the Data Preview column to be sure the correct data is being uploaded. Data that appears incorrectly can denote an improperly formatted file. The data preview only shows a sample of the data in each column in the file.
    NOTE: Large files take significant time to process and a warning message appears for any files that need extra time to process. To avoid long processing times, break up large files into separate uploads.
    Example of Upload Screen
    Note: If you don’t see a checkbox next to a column name, then it’s because there were no changes to that column.
  8. Select Submit to confirm and upload the file.

NOTE: Any file you upload that contains an “Incomplete” for a grade entry will be set to null, with no grade or text displayed. Any file you upload that contains “Complete” for a grade entry will be set to an override grade of the maximum points possible (100% for a grade item) in a column that has the primary display of Complete/incomplete. Any file you upload that contains a numeric entry will be a numeric entry.

Tips for Working With External Data

When uploading data to the Grade Center, Blackboard recommends that you use tab-delimited files. When using tab-delimited files, you don’t have to use quote characters and you can open the files directly in Microsoft® Excel®.

If you have difficulties uploading your file, resave the spreadsheet as a unicode.txt and retry.

Format External Files for Uploading

To synchronize external data to Grade Center data, unique identifiers are necessary for each student and for each column in the Grade Center. The unique identifier used for each student is the student’s user name. The unique identifier for each column is a column ID number.  This is the 6 digit code beside the column name. Column ID numbers are generated by the system and should not be changed or deleted. Columns that do not have column ID numbers in an uploaded file will create new columns in the Grade Center.

Columns that you add to the Grade Center from an external file are added as text columns with points possible equaling zero (0). Text columns cannot be included in calculated columns, such as weighted, total, average, and minimum/maximum. Convert text columns to other columns types and add points possible by editing the column after the upload.

Each data file you upload to the Grade Center requires a header row with one record per line subsequently.

The format of the data file uploaded to the Grade Center is determined by the type of delimiter you use to parse the data into separate columns. Data files are tab-delimited with a file extension of XLS or comma-delimited with a file extension of CSV.

Data in each column of comma-delimited files (CSV) must be contained within a quote character, the most common being quotation marks ( ” ” ). Data in each column of tab-delimited files does not require a quote character.