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Using Word to Print Request Conflict Pairs Lists

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 Request Conflict Pairs reports with report headings on each page.

Procedure

Capture the Request Conflict Pairs report to be formatted for print.

Use your browser to display and copy the entire Request Conflict Pairs report you want to the clipboard. This document uses the example of the "by Enrollment/Request Pairs" option.

• Open the Request Conflict Pairs 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 past the report column header row; i.e. from the first row following the one with two cells displaying the headings "Prim Crs" and "Requests for Other Courses by Students Requesting the Primary Course" to the end of the report. The selected report data is highlighted.
  
  The beginning of the highlighted report data will look similar to the following screen sample.

Note: A quick way to define the above selection is to select a small amount of data beginning with 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. All report data content rows should show as selected.

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

Paste the selected report data into a Word document.

• 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. Click OK to dismiss the dialog and 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.

Note: The pasted data table column widths may be smaller than required to fit report content, causing unwanted data wrapping. The column widths are adjusted as part of the preparation for printing outlined in the steps below.

Prepare the report body for printing.

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

• Switch back to the report's printer friendly window in the browser and select the report column heading row. The row to select is the row just above the selection previously copied to the Word document; it contains the two heading text entries "Prim Crs" and "Requests for Other Courses by Students Requesting the Primary Course". Note: To avoid a potential formatting problem, select only to the end of the text; do not include the extra blank space following the word "Course".
• Click "Copy" on the Edit menu (or press the Ctrl-c key combination). The report column heading row is copied to the clipboard.
• Switch back to the Word document and select the first report data row.
  Note: Be careful to select the first row. Because the table in the Word document is so large, dragging the scrollbar may position near, but not at, the top of the table. Also, be sure to select the entire row; the mouse pointer should be tilted upwards to the right.
• Select Paste Rows from the Edit menu (or press the Ctrl-v key combination). The report column header becomes the new first row in the report content table.

The previous two steps should cause Word to size the report columns to the data in the report. Sometimes, however, the table columns may still not fit the report data correctly. In that case, do the following two extra steps to force Word to correctly size the columns of the table.

• Undo the paste operation from the previous step by clicking Undo Paste on the Edit menu.
• Repeat the paste operation by clicking Paste Rows on the Edit menu (or click the Ctrl-v key combination)

• If the Word table draws extra lines around empty cells, set the Show/Hide Gridlines toggle on the Table menu to hide the gridlines. This makes the report content appear as it will look when printed.
• Select the entire table by clicking Select, then Table on the Table menu.
• 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.

The report body is now formatted for printing.

Prepare the report page heading for printing.

Use Word's Table options and the Header and Footer selection on the View menu to add additional information to the report. The following steps specify column headings to repeat on each page and add a custom report heading which displays the school name, report title, selected report options, report date and page numbering.

• Select the new first row (entire row) and left justify (click the left justify symbol on the formatting toolbar, or click Paragraph on the Format menu, then select Left for Alignment in the Paragraph dialog)
  Note: if the title text is wrapped to two lines, fix it by selecting the row and resetting the font to Courier New, 8 pt. This problem can be avoided by selecting only the text, excluding the extra space following the word "Course", before copying the title row from the browser to the Word document (see the comment in the first step of the previous section).
•  With the report column heading row (first row of the report table) still selected, click Heading Rows Repeat on the Table menu. This tells Word to repeat this row before other data rows on each printed page.
• Define custom report header and/or footer information by clicking Header and Footer on the View menu, then defining the text and fields you want in the provided layout areas. The following example sets up header information (no footer) including the selected report options and report date, school name, 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 Request Conflict Pairs list is now formatted as a printable report.

Print the 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.

Notes

• For larger schools, generating the "Printer friendly version" of the Request Conflict Pairs list 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.

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