Known Issues and resolutions for Angel 7.3
- Office 2007
- Discussion Forums
- IE 8 compatibility
- Date Manager reverting dates
- Caching issues
- Assignment issue
- User tracking will slow your course down, avoid using it if you can.
- How to update your computer for maximum compatibility with Angel (pdf file)
How to Set Compatibility View Settings in Internet Explorer 8
- Step 1: Launch Internet Explorer
- Step 2: Select Tools
- Step 3: Select “Compatibility View Settings”
- Step 4: Type blackboard.com in the "Add this website:" text box
- Step 5: Click Add
- Step 6: Click Close
- Step 7: Restart Internet Explorer
See step by step directions with screenshots
Office issues
- Office 2007 Documents are Not Compatible with Angel (yet) Before uploading Word 2007 documents to Angel, please ask students to save them as Word 2003. This rule needs to be followed for Digital Dropbox, Assignments and other tools where documents are uploaded into Angel. This applies to any Office 2007 documents including Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
- If you don't have Office 2007 installed, but your instructor is posting Office 2007 documents, you can download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint 2007 file formats.
Caching Issues
Internet Explorer 7
1. Once your browser is open, click the Tools menu and select
Internet Options.
2. Make sure the General tab is selected.
3. Under "Browsing History" click "Delete"
4. In the new window, click Delete Files in the Temporary Internet
Files section.
Modify browser settings to cache less aggressively: In Internet Explorer, click on Tools > Internet Options > General tab > (Browsing History/Temporary Internet Files) > Settings > Check for new versions of stored pages > Every time I visit the page
Internet Explorer 6
1. Once your browser is open, click the Tools menu and select
Internet Options.
2. Make sure the General tab is selected.
3. Click Delete Files in the Temporary Internet Files section.
Firefox
1. Once your browser is open, click the Tools menu and select
Clear Private Data
2. Make sure that "Cache" is checked.
3. Click Clear Private Data Now.
Safari
1. Once your browser is open, click the Safari menu and select
Empty Cache
2. Confirm the action by clicking Empty in the pop-up window
Assignment issue
- Description: An instructor has set assessment review to "list
only." Students are seeing that they have submitted the assessment,
but no scores. All of the feedback options are selected, and the
assessment is all Multiple Choice. I was under the impression that
students should see their submission and their overall score with
the List Only Review. Has anyone else had this problem?
Workaround: The assessment review has to be set to "Full Review," and then feedback options (checkboxes below) can be set to whatever the faculty wants the students to view upon submission.
Discussion Forums
- Posting discussion board tips:
- Avoid special characters in titles
- Clear your browsing history, follow the directions above. - Ways to improve discussion viewing:
- Try Firefox (download here), it generally does a better job rendering Angel
- If you are using Vista or IE 8, try setting compatibility mode.
See step by step directions for setting compatibility mode with screenshots
- Try increasing your screen resolution (control panel, display, settings, Screen Resolution, increase that setting)
-
If that is already maximized, you can try maximizing the browser window and removing the toolbars, by toggling the F11 key on your keyboard.
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You can also collapse the course guide to the left, in order to create more horizontal screen real estate.
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Firefox browser seems to do better than internet explorer, so you could download that onto your computer.
Download Firefox browser:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
Dates reverting in the Date Manager and Milestones
Issue: Dates reverting back to previous values after editing them via the date manager.
One instructor changed dates on access/interaction and milestones via the date manager back in January, last week she noticed that some dates had reverted back to last term.
Resolution: You may be able to avoid the issues by using the calendar icon. It might take a couple extra clicks but seems to be less picky.
Q: Cannot open Office 2007 documents with Word 2003
A: There are two options available for dealing with this issue, neither of them perfect.
One choice is to have students with older versions of Office download and install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 file formats. This solution only works for PCs. There is a beta version of a Mac File Format Converter for Word documents only (not for Excel and PowerPoint).
The other solution is to save Office 2007 files in older file formats. This means losing some of the functionality of Office 2007 in these documents, but it does not present the issues for Mac users described in the previous solution. This solution can be implemented on a file-by-file basis, or you can change the default format.
To save an individual Office 2007 file in the older format:
- Click the Office button (top left corner)
- Select Save As
- Select Word 97 - 2003 Document or Excel 97 - 2003 Workbook or PowerPoint 97 - 2003 Presentation or select "Rich Text Format" (*.rtf), which is a more universally readable format.
To change the default in Office 2007 to always save in the older format:
- Click the Office button (top left corner) Choose Word Options, Excel Options, or PowerPoint Options (bottom of the dropdown box)
- Select Save In the Save files in this format dropdown list, choose the old file format: Word 97 - 2003 Document or Excel 97 - 2003 Workbook or PowerPoint 97 - 2003 Presentation.
- You will need to do this in each of the Office 2007 programs.
PowerPoint 2007 issues have been corrected in the "2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 1 (SP1)" update, which can be downloaded from Microsoft's website*.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/Browse.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=9
For users who are unable to download this update there is a work around. You can choose to download the document instead of directly opening the file. To download, right click on the document and chose "save as" to download the document to your computer. You are then able to open the .ppt file without a problem.
Q: Students having trouble with timed tests in IE7
A:If you are using Internet Explorer 7, you must set your security options as follows: Select Tools from the browser menu > Internet Options > Security tab. In the security setting, look for the "Scripting" section (fairly far down). There is one called "Allow status bar updates via scripts". Change this from disable to enable, then click OK.
Angel Troubleshooting
Things to check before contacting the helpdesk.
- If you are having problems with Angel, before calling, please go to this site for a more extensive Angel compatibility test to determine if your browser is to date and has all the correct settings and plug-ins. Since that site belongs to another university, just close that window to get back to WSU's site.
- Check to see if you meet the requirements of Angel
- What browser are you using?
- What version and patchlevel?
- Have you run Windowsupdate?
- Reset security settings in IE
- Have you tried another browser?
- Run malware checks on your system
- Are you running behind a company firewall?
Troubleshooting page not updating issues
If you know there should be updates to pages but you don't see them, your browser may be caching (remembering without purging old content) pages. You can use the following procedure to make sure you always see the latest information in your Angelcourses:
- Go to Tools->"Internet Options" and then on the "General" tap click on "Settings" for "Browsing History" and make sure that "Check for newer versions of stored pages" is set to "Every time I visit the webpage". Any other setting will cause problems like this.
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