[ARCHIVED] How do I organise the columns in the grade book?

[r_w_kaye]

I am aware that it is possible to drag and move columns about in the grade book, but it only works within the current browser view. If I want to see all the titles in the columns (which is essential else I have no idea what is what) I can only see about 6 to 8 columns without scrolling the browser window left or right.  My grade book has over 100 columns and I cannot find any way to drag a column to the beginning without dragging it 6 to the left, then rescrolling the window, then dragging it 6 more to the left, and so on.  With slow servers this takes 3 or 4 minutes (I have tried it).  To do the same for every column in my gradebook would take the best part of a day's work.  Does anyone else have this problem?  What do the Canvas gurus suggest?

And while I am on this topic, how can I arrange the columns so that other teachers on the same canvas course can see the columns arranged in the way I want, without them also having to go through the same process?

[kblack · Accepted solution]

Hi  @r_w_kaye  - I've played around with this a bit myself as a Canvas administrator, and my own experience has been that everything in the gradebook is user-specific when it comes to things like widening columns, etc.  In fact, I just now (as the administrator) made a column in gradebook ridiculously wide, but when I logged in as the faculty member to the same sample site, that column was its normal size again.  And this was using the same browser.  (On the same computer! I used a fictitious account for the "faculty.")  So to answer your second question, unfortunately you can do all the re-arranging you want, but it will not make a difference to the other teachers in the course.  So far as I can tell, the next time they login they will see the gradebook the same way that they left it....not how you left it

All is not lost, however!  I highly encourage you to become acquainted with both How do I arrange columns in the Gradebook? and, especially, How do I filter columns and rows in the Gradebook? to address your main issue of dealing with the gradebook and convey that information to your other teachers.  With a gradebook that large, the ability to filter columns is massively helpful!  Assuming you use either assignment groups and/or modules--and with that many graded assignments I certainly hope you do, for your own sanity--being able to filter the gradebook to just show, for example, Module 2 or only the assignment group Lab Reports will save you from many minutes of clicking-and-dragging frustrations.  The thing to remember with filters, however, is that they are "sticky."  This is both good and bad.  Good in that once you set the filter, the next time you (not your other teachers) login, that filter will still be in place; bad in that it is easy to forget that you have a filter in place, and wonder where 64 columns just went!  But your other instructors can set their own filters in place, as well.

Not the perfect solution, perhaps, or what you exactly had in mind (especially with moving columns around), but the more you and your other teachers can use filters, I think many of your issues may be solved.

I hope this helps a bit, Richard.