Learn how to save your graduates file correctly for upload to the Clearinghouse’s secure FTP.
This lesson is intended for secondary school and school district users of StudentTracker for High Schools.
Resources
- Formatting and Submitting a Graduates File (pdf)
- Formatting and Submitting a Graduates File
- Common Graduates File Submission Errors
Transcript
It's time to save your file. Before proceeding, check the following:
- In the first column, PH3 is entered in the first row which is the header row.
- All student detail rows start with PD3 and PT3 is entered in the last row which is the trailer row.
- Your account code in cell B1 matches the account code provided to you by the Clearinghouse.
- There are no odd values or special characters in the student name fields.
- Dates are formatted in the year month day format.
- Students dates of birth look correct. Sometimes the year appears as 1899 instead of 1999.
- Graduation dates for each student match the dates in your SIS. If you dragged and dropped dates to duplicate the data for all student rows, you may have inadvertently advanced the date by one day for each student.
- ED in all caps appears at the end of each student row.
Now let's save the file. All files must be submitted in text parentheses tab delimited end parentheses format. Any file submitted in any other format will automatically be rejected by our system. If your file is rejected, you will be notified via email. In Excel, select file, save as. Enter the file name. File names may contain hyphens and underscores. Do not use any other special characters in the name. Choose text parentheses tab delimited close parentheses from the save as type drop-down menu. You may see multiple .txt file format options. Use text parentheses tab delimited close parentheses parentheses star period txt close parentheses.
Choose save and select okay or yes on any subsequent popups that display.
If you use Google Sheets, dot txt will not be available as a save option. You will need to save and download a .tsv file, open it in a text editor or other program and save it as a .txt.
Once your file is saved, you're ready to submit via the Clearinghouse's secure FTP portal.