Using Word to Print Master Schedule Grids

The Scheduling Optimizer reports are designed for onscreen viewing in your browser. The reports or selected sections of them can be printed either directly from your browser or indirectly using Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel (see Printing Reports).

This document outlines how to use Microsoft Word to set up a print format version of the Master Schedule  Grids reports with report headings on each page.

Procedure

Use your browser to display and copy the data portion of the Master Schedule Grids report you want to the clipboard. This document uses the example of the "Teacher Name by Term" option.

• Open the Master Schedule Grids report group and select the options for the report you want to print. The first report page appears on the screen.
• Click the "Printer friendly version" button, then click OK in the dialog box that appears. The entire report appears in a new window.
• Select all displayed data rows you want to print. To select all report data, start by selecting a small amount of data at the beginning of the first data row, then scroll to the end of the report and simultaneously hold down the Shift key and click at the end of the last row. To select a range of rows within the report, select a small amount of data at the beginning of the first data row you want to print, then scroll to the last row you want to print and simultaneously hold down the Shift key and click at the end of the last row you want. The selected report data is highlighted.
  
  The beginning of the highlighted report data will look similar to the following screen sample.

• Click "Copy" on the Edit menu (or press the Ctrl-c key combination). The report information is copied to the clipboard.

• Start a new document in Word.
• Select "Page Setup..." on Word's File menu, then select Landscape in the Orientation section of the Margins tab in the resulting dialog box.
• While still in the Page Setup dialog, select the Paper tab and enter enter 21" in the Width field, then click OK. A message warning that one or more margins is outside of the page's printable area will appear; click Ignore to dismiss this message. The dialog closes and you return to the blank document.
• If Word is not already set up to display the document in Normal mode, click Normal on the View menu.
• Select "Paste" from the Edit menu (or press the Ctrl-v key combination). The contents of the clipboard are pasted into the Word document as shown below.

In preparation for printing, make several adjustments to the representation of the report body as initially pasted into the Word document.

• Remove any columns you want to exclude from the printed report. Columns which may be removed to minimize the width of the report include the title column on the right side of the report (this column duplicates the leftmost column and is present for convenience when viewing the report onscreen). You may also wish to remove columns assigned to periods which contain few or no classes of interest to analyzing the report; e.g. homeroom periods and early or late periods defined outside the normal schedule day for special purposes. To delete a column, position the cursor at the top of the column. Click when the cursor appears as a vertical arrow. The entire selected column shows as highlighted. Use the tables menu to select delete/columns; alternatively right-click in the selected column, then select Delete Columns from the popup menu that appears. The selected column disappears from the display.

• On the Table menu in Word, click Select, then Table. The entire data table is highlighted.
• On the Table menu, click Table Properties, then clear the checkbox labeled "Allow row to break across pages" on the Row tab of the Table Properties dialog. This ensures that the printed report won't split a data row over two pages.
• From the File menu, select the Page Setup dialog, select the Paper tab and adjust the value in the Width field according to the actual page width of the paper you are printing on (e.g. 14 inches for legal size paper), then click OK to close the dialog and return to the document.

If you find that the above steps result in a report which exceeds the defined page width by a small amount, try the following additional step.

• From the File menu, select Page Setup..., click the Margins tab and adjust the left and right page margins to the smallest width your printer will allow.

The report body is now formatted for printing.

Use the "Header and Footer" selection on Word's View menu to add additional information to the report. The following example adds a report heading which displays the school name, report title (you could include report options here), date the report was printed and page numbering.

Note: The automatic page numbering can be included by selecting the Page X of Y entry from the Insert Auto Text pulldown in the Header and Footer toolbar.

The imported Master Schedule grid is now formatted as a printable report.

Use the "Print Preview" option on Word's File menu to preview the report onscreen or, alternatively, print one or two pages to verify that that the report will print correctly. When you are satisfied that the report is correctly set up for print, print it using Word's print features. The following illustration shows part of the printed report prepared with the above steps.

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Notes

• For larger schools, generating the "Printer friendly version" of the Master Schedule grid and pasting the report content into Word may both take some time. Be prepared to wait a minute or two for these steps to complete.
• If the above procedure steps result in a report which is still too wide for the defined page width, try to reduce the required report width still further by making individual report columns narrower. To narrow a column, position the mouse on the vertical border within a cell belonging to the selected column and when the cursor changes to the column adjusting symbol (two horizontal arrows with vertical bars between them), drag the vertical column border to the left. The text within each cell of the column being adjusted will wrap to fit the new column width, so that as the report becomes narrower it will also become longer. Adjust the width of each column in turn, moving from left to right. This technique allows you to minimize the width of the report.
• If the number of periods in the schedule makes it impractical to print the report in a single page width even after using all the above techniques, you may need to divide the report into two vertical bands. To do this, follow the above steps twice. The first time delete the columns for roughly the second half of the periods in the schedule and print the resulting report. The second time, delete the columns for the periods you printed the first time and print again.

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