The assignment grid view in the StudyMinder Homework System homework planner has dozens of features for listing, sorting and grouping your assignments so you'll always know what's due. This tutorial takes you through the many features of the grid view.
(If you are not using the StudyMinder student planner yet, download the free trial and follow along with the tutorial.)
Transcript of Video Tutorial 6
This is the sixth in a series of tutorials on how to use the StudyMinder Homework System school planner. In this tutorial we’ll review the features in the Homework grid view.
Click on the homework icon to show the grid view. From here you can see all of the assignments that you have entered. You can make changes from the grid view by clicking on any assignment. Just click on the assignment and you can begin editing. To click on the English assignment, “Read chapter two,” we can change that to, “Read chapter three.” The assignment has now been updated and saved. If you click on the menu under the Edit column, a menu appears where you can open the assignment. In the assignment Edit view you can see that this assignment now says, “Read chapter three.” If we change it to “two” from the edit window and save, the grid view has been updated so it now says, “Read chapter two.” You can also open assignments by clicking on the far left edge of the column. That will open up the assignment that you selected.
You can arrange the assignments in the list view by clicking on any of the columns. If you click on Description, you can sort by description. Click on Type to show by type. If you click on the Done column, you can display your homework assignments in the order where they were completed. But there are also additional features in the list view. You may not want to see your completed assignments at all. When you move the mouse over the Done column, a little filter icon is displayed. If you click on it, a menu opens. And from here you can choose to show all of the items that are checked or unchecked. If you choose unchecked, now only the unchecked items appear, so that your completed assignments are no longer displayed. If you click on the filter again, you can show all, and now all of your assignments are displayed. You can do the same thing with any of the columns. If you go to the Class column, highlight the filter icon, click it, you can now filter so that only certain classes show. Click on English and now only English class appears.
When you’re filtering assignments, you can tell at the bottom left-hand corner of the grid view. It will show you that you're now filtering for classes and only the English class is showing. You can filter on more than one column at the same time. One of the English class assignments is completed, the other is not. So if we go back to the Done column and click on the filter, we can show only the unchecked assignments. Now we're filtering everything except English assignments which have not yet been completed. You can undo all of the filters at the same time by clicking the “X” that appears just to the left, at the bottom left-hand corner of the grid view. Click that, and now all of the filters are removed and you can see all of your classes again.
The columns can be rearranged by simply dragging on a column and moving it to a different location. If you'd like to see Description before Type, you can just drag it over. If you want Due Date to appear before anything else, take the Due Date, drag it all the way over to the left edge, and now the Due Date appears first.
Columns can also be removed. If you right click on any column, a menu appears. Choose the menu option, “Remove this column.” We've now just removed the Description column. You can remove as many columns as you want. To bring them back, right click on any column and select the “Column Chooser.” A box will appear that has all of the columns that you can select from. We just removed Description. If you drag it out of the box and move it back up into the grid view, it reappears. You can do the same thing with the other columns that are here in the customization box. You can take any of them and drag them up into the grid view.
When you exit the StudyMinder student planner, your changes will be saved, and the next time that you come back to the grid view the columns will be arranged as you left them. By right clicking on any column, you can also size the columns so that they best show the information. Choose “Best Fit All Columns,” and the columns are resized automatically.
Another feature you can access by right clicking on any column is the “Group By” feature. Click on the Show Group Box and a special box appears above the column headers. It says, “Drag a column header here to group by that column.” This is a special sort of filter, and it's a combination of filtering and sorting at the same time. Let's drag the Class column header up into the Group By box. Now you can see you’re grouping by classes, and now in the grid view each class appears on a separate row. If you check the Plus buttons, the columns expand, and now you can see all of the rows. So under English class we now have the English classes. Under Math we now have the math classes. You can continue to sort by clicking on any of the columns and the list will be sorted under each of the groups. You can also group by multiple columns at the same time. If you'd like to Group By Percent Complete, drag Percent Complete up into the Group By box, and now you have groups and subgroups. You can remove the grouping by right clicking on any of them, and choose Ungroup. Or are you can drag out of the Group By box and back into the grid view, and it will disappear. Right click on any column and choose Hide Group Box, and now it's gone.
This concludes tutorial number six, how to use the homework grid view.