submitting on blackboard

college2008

hi,


i am trying to submit an assignment on blackboard. When i try to, having inputted my student number in the comment box, the file comes up as:


C:\Users\johnbanks39\Desktop\information.xlsx


when i press submit, it says : please enter a valid file


can anyone help??? what am i doing wrong??

thanks

rainbow kirby

The issue could be that Blackboard is not recognising the file as it's an Office 2007 file.
Try saving the excel file as an Excel 2003 file (.xls), then try to upload and see what happens.

(Apparently there are some issues with Office 2007 and Blackboard...)

jozi

Don't suppose your using firefox?

Girlfriend had a similar problem, we tried a word doc, pdf doc, and docx file.

She wrote an email to her tutor, as did other from the group she was doing the project with, only to receive a not so nice email back which was meant to be sent to someone else about how she used mozilla and that it states on the site you can't use it.

Could be your problem. Try it in IE

ucdperson

Office 2007 files should only be an issue with safeassignment and the like. General Blackboard submission should work with IE7 or Firefox 2, it will not work with Firefox 3 or IE 8 beta, not sure about other browsers. I think Blackboard is only guaranteed to work with Internet Explorer 6!

Raphael

Even if the office file isn't the issue, I'd still try to avoid submitting it if possible. Nothing other than office 2007 can open xlsx files, so if your lecturer is using an older version of office, or open office, they won;t be able to access the file.

the evil lime

It's IE you should use. Blackboard and Firefox don't get on (I just had to handle 150+ submissions, I learned that the hard way). If it's still not working I'd say email it to the lecturer.

Red Alert

Why don't they mandate PDF submission - cuts out all this nonsense? Glad to see blackboard is still a flaky pile of puke, just like it used to be when I was an undergrad.

ucdperson

Why don't they mandate PDF submission

PDF submission wouldn't help the browser problem. But it would be more machine independent. There is a filter to allow older versions of Microsoft Office open 2007 version files, which is good as UCD probably isn't planning to buy any more new computers.

* and yes , Blackboard is still a flaky pile of puke

Raphael

The docx etc.? Must look for that, have been asking people to resave and resend files for the last while.

ucdperson

Must look for that, have been asking people to resave and resend files for the last while.

http://tinyurl.com/3xr4tt

of course people can also use the old .doc format to save by default.

Raphael

Doh, thought you said to allow open office to open docx files. My bad. Guess I'll ahve to lkeep asing people to save it in a normal file format...

ucdperson

I think Open office 3 (now in RC3) will open Microsoft Office 2007 files to some extent, but I haven't tried it.

ucdperson

Replying to my own posting, I've just downloaded Open Office 3 and tried to open a Docx file (a slightly complex one). It made a complete mess of the job.

SirLemonhead

Red Alert wrote: »

Why don't they mandate PDF submission - cuts out all this nonsense? Glad to see blackboard is still a flaky pile of puke, just like it used to be when I was an undergrad.

So every student has to submit all their assignments in PDF format?

graduate

So every student has to submit all their assignments in PDF format?

Why not?

Thomas_S_Hunterson

SirLemonhead wrote: »

So every student has to submit all their assignments in PDF format?

It would make a lot of sense.

rainbow kirby

SirLemonhead wrote: »

So every student has to submit all their assignments in PDF format?

Would make a lot more sense than all that ****ing around with M$ Office...

Red Alert

PDF is a universal format that loads of applications (including MS office if you download the free PDFCreator) can write documents out to. It displays exactly the same on any computer, as long as the machine can read PDF's. For assessment purposes it's much harder to tamper with a PDF file than a Word or other program-specific file.

SirLemonhead

If only things were that easy. Half the students out there don't even know what a PDF is

SirLemonhead

rainbow kirby wrote: »

Would make a lot more sense than all that ****ing around with M$ Office...

Oh yawn, M$.

christo82

My sister had a similar problem to these today submitting an essay. An error screen kept coming up after pressing submit. We finally fixed it by using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, which is strange considering IE would be the biggest and most widely used software. Definitely something for the Techies in UCD or wherever to look into.

Mushy

Soory to drag up this old thread, but have just had to submit my first essay through Blackboard, and wanna know if I did it right. I went into Tools>Digital Dropbox, then added the file and submitted. Is that all I have to do? A message saying it wouldn't be sent did come up, but the receipt has it as been added to the Dropbox. So is it ok?

EDIT: Then found where Send File was, clicked that, chose the existing file, and said it had been sent on to people with role of Instructor. I'm guessing now that its ok? Also, had an Office 2007 file and Firefox...worked fine.

bnt

Wasn't there an Assignment? Normally, you submit the file when you "do the assignment".

There is a PDF Writer Plugin for Office 2007, so you could save straight from Excel to PDF. However, if your lecturer tells you to submit an Excel file, that means XLS, Office 97-2003 format.

I have had the browser issue before, and the solution (on Windows) was to use Internet Explorer to submit.

Dave!

If you have trouble submitting by BB then try a different browser... Had trouble last semester and it turns out it was something to do with Firefox.

Red Alert

Yeah BB is very IE-centric. Pity the college couldn't have chosen a more standards-compliant system but there you go.

woop

there has been recent difficulty with BB submission though

lots of people cant submit off theyre lappys and end up doing it on the ucd ones