FAQ Number : P1f                                     Latest Update: 01/09/07

If you have moved to a vertical registration system, then when you run the upload from SIMS.net your pupils will only have the vertical group details in the Reg Group field and no indication of their year.

Alternatively, you may choose to show just the Year of the student - in which case click on the YEAR GROUP tick box on the right hand side.

If you would prefer to see the Year and Vertical group together eg 7HFU, 8HFU etc then you will need to do the following.   Please be aware that if you do this, you will have MANY more registration groups than previously, as each year within each registration group will be treated as a separate registration group.

Run the SIMS report ‘PFM Pupil Data report – Sues version’ and export to a folder / file name of your choice as usual and make sure it is a CSV file.

2.   Open the exported file using Excel- change file type to All Files to be able to see the file.

Once open you will see that column 3 shows the year and column 4 the vertical registration group. You will need to insert a new blank column after column 4. You now need to join columns 3 and 4 together, into column 5.  To do so, against the first child enter the following

=  (equals sign)   then click on the first child’s year    then type in &”(space)” then click on their registration group.  This should give a joint field.   Copy this formula all the way down the list for the other children.

4.    Enter a further blank column to the right of this new one.   Copy the entire column of joint fields. Go to the top of the new blank column - right click – Paste Special – Values only. This should duplicate the joint field

5.    Finally delete the OLD reg group column and the original joint column, leaving only the year column and the new joint one.

6.    Save and close file and import into PFM as usual.

This is a bit advanced on the Excel side, so if you have an Excel expert you might ask them to help!  If you can’t work it through, please just email the original file from SIMS.net to us and we can make this adjustment for you.  As mentioned before, we hope to address this in the next upgrade as vertical registration groups seem to be becoming more and more popular.