Beta Testers Wanted: Grid Schedules

[lklivingston]

I checked Year 2, Year 4, Year 6, and Year 9, downloading as .docx files (for Word). The formatting seems to be coming through beautifully, even when cells are merged.

The computer I'm using right now doesn't have Open Office installed. I want to look more closely at the formatting troubles when downloading in that format. What I saw looked pretty easy to fix, so that we could possibly just post some simple instructions, but I want to be sure I wasn't missing some more complicated problems. Some schedules have quite a bit of merging of cells.

[MaryFrances]

Once it was in .odt the pages were slightly too long because the top line was no longer merged. And then all of the free rewards were messed up because those cells were unmerged.

That's all I noticed, because at that point I gave up in frustration. For me, the whole point of the grid schedules is that I don't have to do that kind of formatting. I just make a few quick a scheduling changes, print and go.

I know you're trying to make things simpler on the admin side, but it may just be moving that time to the user side snd multiplying it times hundreds or thousands of people.


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[lklivingston]

I'm sorry. What are "free rewards"?

Are you using the .odt because you are editing it? Do you have a Google Drive account? (You can edit the charts directly in Google Drive *if* you are logged in. You just copy them to your own account.)

You can print the file directly from Google (without logging in) if you are not editing it. I didn't work hard to keep the charts on properly paginated because that requires some editing that makes them harder to read and use; if people often just print them as-is, I can be more intentional about making them fit.

Do you currently just download the .odt and print it without any changes?

Knowing more about how most people use these charts helps me make a solution that works for everyone. This proposed change isn't even mostly about what's convenient for me. I think many of our users probably would like to have the charts in Google because it's so much easier to access them on various devices, but I can't know that unless I hear from you, nor can I know who is using them in other ways without hearing, so I appreciate all the feedback.

[suzukimom]

I think their auto correct fixed 'free reads'.....

I haven't tried the new locations.... but as to how I use the existinv files....

I get the word version, and then do a lit of editing to Canadianize it....

[MelisaH]

I'm sorry.  What are "free rewards"?

Free reads - pretty sure it is an auto-correct word thing.

[lklivingston]

Thanks! I don't know why that didn't occur to me.

[terrib15]

I edit the schedules to suite our needs. That definitely needs to be a possibility.
Thanks,
Terri in TX

[Amy Jo Hines]

Tried the regular Year 4 - internet is slightly slow tonight, took a minute or two to load, and another 1-2 minutes to copy over, and further lag (below)

* Can't edit at your link
* Copied, could edit but annoyingly slow (delay even in hitting a letter) -- I consider this unusable
* Had to open or save as a PDF (which I can then print)
* Not lined up - on page one the *notes have bumped to two, there is a blank page after term 2 and term 3's final table is split over two pages, 8 pages total.

Downloaded as an ODT, using Open Office Writer: ALL the merges are gone, including the header row of each table. The file is 11 pages. I could fix this very easily, however I might have to flip between the ODT and the PDF to do it properly. I think many would have difficulty, especially if they were on a smaller device.

Downloaded as DOCX using Open Office Writer: Looks identical to the one on Google docs, same page issue, which I fixed by removing the blank line(s) at the top of the page, above the tables.

I'm running Firefox in Ubuntu Linux on a desktop computer. HTH! I don't envy your formatting woes at all and I appreciate the chart schedules many, many times a year. Thank you for providing them!

[EmilyT]

Downloaded as an ODT, using Open Office Writer: ALL the merges are gone, including the header row of each table. The file is 11 pages. I could fix this very easily, however I might have to flip between the ODT and the PDF to do it properly. I think many would have difficulty, especially if they were on a smaller device.

I agree with this.  I just tried downloading Year 4 and opening it in LibreOffice.

Loosing the merged cells when readings are spread over multiple weeks looks confusing.

Also, in LibreOffice, some rows are splitting across pages, so I'm seeing things like "Rip Van" at the bottom of one page and "Winkle" on the top of the next.

I do enough cutting/pasting/editing with our schedules that these errors don't bother me much.  As downloaded, it is not a pretty document, but I do very much appreciate the ability to edit on my own computer and not "in the cloud."

[MelisaH]

Downloaded as an ODT, using Open Office Writer: ALL the merges are gone, including the header row of each table. The file is 11 pages. I could fix this very easily, however I might have to flip between the ODT and the PDF to do it properly. I think many would have difficulty, especially if they were on a smaller device.

Kathy, I had these same issues for Year 4 file as above. I could fix it (several different merge fixes to get things back on their proper pages) but for those who do not mess with formatting all the time, it would be an issue.

This was using Firefox as my browser, otherwise everything else in Amy Jo's description above matches mine.