Exporting grades to Excel - convert points to percentages

[mabaryj]

I am attempting to export a gradesheet for a class to Excel and retain the percentages showing in Canvas. The percentages originally showed as points in Canvas; I selected to view them as percentages. Can I keep the percentages on export? Thanks.

[kmeeusen · Accepted solution]

Hi @mabaryj 

Not sure exactly why you didn't just download and test this yourself, but if you have your Canvas Gradebook set to display totals as percentages, those percentages will also display in the export file.

Just tested this in a live classroom, and it worked as expected.

Kelley

[Ron_Bowman · Accepted solution]

@jgaul 

Actually if I am reading the solution correctly, I believe it is mentioning the total column only as a percentage - which is correct.  However, what the original post and subsequent follow ups are asking about is for an individual assignment to show up as a percent instead of as points in the download.

So the solution posted is not correct for the question asked, but it is correct if you are just interested in the totals column

[kmeeusen · Accepted solution]

Hi @mabaryj 

Not sure exactly why you didn't just download and test this yourself, but if you have your Canvas Gradebook set to display totals as percentages, those percentages will also display in the export file.

Just tested this in a live classroom, and it worked as expected.

Kelley

[amanda_dills]

Hi, @kmeeusen --

I'm having the EXACT same issue as @mabaryj  described -- individual grade columns that are set to "display as percentages" are exporting into the CSV file with their point totals, rather than their percentage. (The Assignment Group total columns do show up as percentages in the exported file, but individual grade columns seem to be able to ONLY export as points.)  Is there a workaround for this? 

[PennyC]

I agree with the original poster, Canvas is exporting points and not the displayed percentage. This will not allow me to run a calculation in excel to verify that the Canvas grade book is correct. As well it is an issue since Canvas does not allow you to print the Canvas grade book within Canvas. The categories columns show the percentages, but the individual grade columns DO NOT. How do I get the grade book to export the percentages?

[rdearazo]

@kmeeusen 

Add me to the list. I have tried the export three times and I always get the assignments showing their raw points instead of the % which they are set to display as. I don't know why the first reply was marked as a solution, when there is no solution shown there with respect to the export. Can anyone help? 

[mrios4]

The solution provided is incorrect. My grade center is set up to % in Canvas. The export is raw scores, please provide a solution.

[Ron_Bowman]

@rdearazo @mrios4 

I just tried everything I could think of for being able to export the percents and not the points.  I had a thought that existing assignments could not be changed over to percents and exported as percents.  So I created a new assignment with enter grades as percents.  I entered the score as a percent and it showed that percent.  However as you noted the export shows that percent converted to points in the export.

It seems that Instructure employees are monitoring and responding to a lot of posts.  So hopefully one of them will find this one and explain the way to have the percents in the export.  Or worse yet inform us that the export will be points only.

[jgaul]

did not mean to kudo this solution. It should be deleted since it doen't work.

[Ron_Bowman · Accepted solution]

@jgaul 

Actually if I am reading the solution correctly, I believe it is mentioning the total column only as a percentage - which is correct.  However, what the original post and subsequent follow ups are asking about is for an individual assignment to show up as a percent instead of as points in the download.

So the solution posted is not correct for the question asked, but it is correct if you are just interested in the totals column

[jgaul]

Download the gradebook and open in excel.  I have quizzes set for different numbers of points too.

The only way I have found to get percentages for quizzes is to insert a blank column next to a quiz, then use a formula to calculate a percentage for the first student,then copy this cell and paste into the rest of the column. When I copy this new column into excel the values appear as numbers.

Example:  student scores 15/23 for a quiz. The number 15 appears in cell D3.  In the blank cell E3 input =D3*100/23 then return. 65.2 appears in E3. Copy E3, then click on F3, holding the shift to highlight the rest of the column, then return. I bold this column to make it stick out.

It may seem like a pain but it goes pretty fast.

[amyslack]

We are seeing the same thing. It would be great if it was possible to actually export the view you are seeing on the Grades page so that this extra step of manually setting up formulas in the excel spreadsheet to calculate the percentages afterwards would not be necessary. It is an extra cumbersome step that would be nice to not have to do. 

[JeffWestover]

The solution offered does not work. May 8, 2023. The rest of the discussion thread on this post does not help either. Thank you.

[JanuaryJernigan]

So EXCITED to reply to this!!  I was having the SAME problem.  Then I noticed if the original assignment settings have "Display Grade as a Percentage" chosen then the Excel file shows the percentage grade and not the points!  Hope this makes sense. 🙂  

[CherylBowers]

I don't know that I'm understanding what you meant. I have "Display Grade as a Percentage" for each of my assignments, but they still download as a raw score.

[MikeDombroski]

I have not be able to export individual graded items as percentages instead of raw scores. They will display as percentages, but not export as that. Instead, any export is in raw scores for individual grades. I have tried editing the assignment settings to "Display Grade as a Percentage" but still get raw scores for individual assignments. Has anyone be able to export individual assignments as percentages successfully?

[stimme · Accepted solution]

This thread has had a long life. Most posts do not explicitly say why the percentage display in the CSV export would be useful (or how it would be used). One stated goal is to calculate totals to double check Canvas's total. I am writing share observations that may be helpful to anyone thinking about calculating totals to double check Canvas's total.

Giving different possible point values to assignments in the same group gives them different relative weight. Canvas totals scored assignments (unscored assignments are left out) by adding up the points earned across assignments as the numerator and adding up the points possible across assignments as the denominator, which may not yield the same result as first converting them to percentages does.

Suppose that a student earns 0/1 (0%) for Homework #1 and 4/5 (80%) for Homework #2. When these are the only scored assignments in an assignment group for Homework, Canvas calculates its percentage subtotal as 66.67% (4 points earned (0+4) / 6 points possible (1+5), rounded). Treating the Homework subtotal as the average of the percentages would yield 40%, which would also treat the two assignments as having equal weight despite having different possible points. Working only with the percentages of specific assignments can produce different results than Canvas's calculations, and this is because working only with percentages disregards the relative weighting made possible by different possible point values.

If you think of each assignment's score as a percentage so that each assignment in a group has the same weight as all the others, then you should set points possible at 100 for every assignment (this takes extra care with classic quizzes, since all questions points possible must add up to 100). This is best implemented when a course begins. I admit it isn't much help after the grading is done. (Enabling weighted assignment groups helps to handle the relative weighting of different types of assignments. )

Getting percentages for assignment columns in the CSV export is not an option. One might regard this as a useful limitation when one's goal is to double check Canvas's total, because Canvas calculates totals using points in the way described above (regardless of assignments' Display Grade As setting).

(I am a Community Coach, not an Instructure employee.)

[CherylBowers]

I need to compare one class' assignment scores to one of my classes for a SACS-COC evaluation. The original instructor had the assignment scores in percentages. So, it would help to download mine as percentages too. 

[chriscas]

Hi @CherylBowers,

As far as I know, the response @stimme is correct in that the CSV download has always had assignment grades as points, likely for the reasons stated in their reply.

The best way I can think of to get things back into percentages would be to make a copy of the grades tab in excel, then replace all the points with a formula that would reference the original sheet and do the math to get the percentage based on the original tab's points earned and points possible.  Something like this in the new tab for cell I4: "=original!I4/original!I$3".  You can then copy/paste I4 into all of the points tabs on your new sheet and you should have a percentage equivalent of the original (but blanks will be 0's, that could be fixed with a more complex formula but i'm trying to keep this es simple as I can).  The percentages will be between 0 and 1 in this case, so you could either multiply by 100 or change the display formatting in excel if you want numbers between 0 and 100.

I hope this makes sense and may help you a bit.

-Chris