Summary: Edit the report.html file to change the appearance of the Printed Results page.
Difficulty: Medium
Powerful customization in Quizmaker ‘09
Have you seen how powerful the customization features are Articulate Quizmaker ‘09? Gone is the fixed template where you could just change colors and fonts. You can now place almost any object on the slide in Quizmaker ‘09. But one element of the quiz you can’t customize is the Printed Results page.
As you know, you can let the user print their results at the end of a quiz. We saw recently how to change the report.html to change the content of that report.
Why would you want to do that? Well, lots of reasons.
So let’s look at the changes we can make to the report. Let’s also see how you can permanently change that report.html so that you don’t need to keep manually changing it each time you publish.
Activating the Print Results feature in Quizmaker ‘09
Pass Result
To have Print Results button in your quiz, click on the Pass Results button in the ribbon of Quizmaker ‘09:
(the picture shows both the Pass Results button and the Fail Results button)
Check the box “Allow user to print results”.:
Fail Result
Do the same with the Fail Results button on the ribbon as shown above. Check the box to “Allow users to print results”.
Report.html
The Report.html file is where the Printed Results form is compiled. This is where we need to make changes. You’ll find this file in the published files of your quiz. In Quizmaker ‘09, the file is in the quiz_content folder but only if you have checked the Printed Results option as I explained above.
Publishing a standalone quiz
In a standalone version of your quiz, your published files will look something like this:
Open the content_quiz folder to see this:
Notice the report.html file. This is what we need to open and edit.
Publishing a quiz to Presenter
If you publish your quiz to PowerPoint and Articulate Presenter, then you need to look at your Presenter published files. They’ll look something like this:
Open the data folder:
Open the SWF folder:
Finally, open the quiz folder to see your regular quiz project files:
A Revised Report.html
We need to make a few basic edits to the report.html to change the layout. Or, replace this file with another edited report.html. I’ve added comments in the code to an edited report.html to make it easier to know what to edit. Replace the report.html in your published files with this one, or else just make the edits as shown.
- Download this file in zip form.
(The only thing that I’ve changed is the comments.)
- Click here to view before downloading.
(The file is in text format here and not html. Download the zip version above).
- Unzip the file..
- Open it in Notepad. (right-click the file and select Open with -> Notepad. See here for a quick video demo on how to do that).
- See the comments? I’ve numbered each one. They correspond to one part of the Print Results Page.
- Simply comment out the appropriate line to remove it from the Print Results page. You comment out the line by placing // at the beginning of the line.
- Look at the Engage interaction below to know what to comment out. For example, step 4 in the interaction below corresponds to comment 4 in the report.html file.
- Create a test quiz, view the Print Results page. As you edit your report.html, refresh the page each time you make a new save to the document. That way you know your edits are working as you want.
- Make the very simple edits and save your document.
- Replace the report.html in your existing quiz with this new version. Don’t forget that the code is exactly the same except now you have commented lines out.
- Distribute the quiz. Don’t republish it in Articulate Presenter or Quizmaker or you’ll lose your edits!
Example
We want to remove the Correct Answer and the Student Answer from the results page. We need to change steps 5 and 20 for the Correct Answer column (the body and the header) and steps 6 and 21 for the Student Answer column (again the body and the header).
BEFORE
AFTER
Do the same for step 6.
BEFORE
AFTER
Step 20
BEFORE
AFTER
and Step 21
BEFORE
AFTER
Save the file. The quiz is ready to go.
A New Print Results Format
With just four sets of forward slashes, you’ve changed the Printed Results from this:
to this:
And this is the quiz. Test it yourself and see how it’s changed.
Save even more time
If you just need to edit one quiz, then the method above is fine. But if you want to change all or many of your quizzes, then try the following:
Please note this is not supported by Articulate.
Rather than edit each time you publish, edit the program files. The revised report.html is automatically inserted into the quiz. This is neat because you don’t need to keep adding forward slashes to the report.html code. Do it once and keep different copies of the report.html for different uses.
Go through the steps above but then do the following:
Computer -> Local disk C: drive -> Program Files -> Articulate -> Articulate Quizmaker -> Content (the names change depending on your version of Windows)
Now, create a quiz as usual and publish. View the Printed Results, and see the new format. You don’t have to change the published files yourself.
You can keep different versions of the report. Make sure the file you want is called report.html. Rename the others to report2.html, or report_without_student_answers.html etc. so that Quizmaker doesn’t get confused.
When you re-install Quizmaker ‘09, your main report.html will get overwritten so you will want to keep a backup of it somewhere.
NOTES
Dave – I found this article to be EXTREMELY helpful. I was wondering if you could answer another question: is there any way to change the column widths? I slimmed down the ‘Results’ page to just include the question number, question text, and student response. It’s a survey essay question. So if the student writes a lot, and while the questions are relatively brief, the table looks lopsided, as the question text column takes up 75% and the response column takes up roughly 25%. Any thoughts?
Hi Dave
I have a slightly off-topic query, but it relates to customizing quizmaker, so here goes…
I want to transfer a quiz from one of our old steam-powered eLearning platforms to Articulate Quizmaker (v2), but I’m not sure I can customize the output as required.
Here’s what I’m trying to do: We have a quiz of 30 questions, based on 3 case studies. I want users to be able to open the case study in a popup to refer to it while they answer the questions. So, I thought it’d be neat to create a link in the question rubric. I can’t do this directly in the authoring environment, but not to worry, I’ll just edit the xml content file after it’s published. Alas, whenever I edit the quizmaker.xml file to add my little extras to a CDATA section, it breaks the file! Am I doing something wrong, or can’t this be done?
Previous xml:
<![CDATA[From the list below, select the most appropriate order entry for Charles' allergy status:]]>
My xml
<![CDATA[Open the case study.From the list below, select the most appropriate order entry for Charles' allergy status:]]>
Thanks!
Andy
Hi Andy,
I am not sure if you can edit the XML the way you are trying. But I know you can add links in questions in Quizmaker 2 within the program itself. You just need to use HTML. This knowledge base article tells you a little what you can do: http://www.articulate.com/support/kb/000548.php Of course, linking within Quizmaker ‘09 is even easier.
Hi Laura,
It is a good question and I haven’t had time to look into this yet. I imagine that the answer is to edit the percentages in the section just after Comment 2 in the report.html file. The question is shown as a width of width: 46.25%. You might want to try reducing that and seeing what happens! When I have a sec, I’ll take a closer look.
Hi Dave – I ma still working with V2 as we did not upgrade apps due to the economy. Will these instructions work with V2?
Thanks for you help.
Cheryl
Hi Dave – I am still working with V2 as we did not upgrade apps due to the economy. Will these instructions work with V2?
Thanks for you help.
Cheryl
Hi Cheryl, Yes these instructions will work with Version 2 with one exception, the quiz title. So either, choose to not show the quiz title or else use this special version of the revised Report.html for version 2.
Hi Dave – I have question on the “e-mail results” side. In Version 2, the e-mail was in a typical text format with ” used as text identifiers and a , seperating fields. In Articulate 2009, when I e-mail the results, I no longer have text identifiers and many of the “date fields” which use to start a new line are now in the body of the e-mail. Is there a way to adjust this output as well?
Any help would be appreciated. I have greatly enjoyed your site and has been a huge help.
Thanks
Thanks Dave,
This is great because we don’t want people knowing what the got right or wrong or having a record of the questions asked. They need to submit their answers for scoring, so all we want is the question number and the student answer.
I was working my way to that solution using the published report.html file, bit by bit, but it sure was nice to come across your commented file to use as a roadmap. That plus I hadn’t yet found the default/template report.html file in the Quizmake folder. That takes a huge maintenance load off my mind.
Thanks again
Because we can’t get the “Print Results” without having “Review Quiz” turned on, and I can’t seem to turn off the option where the review marks each question as Correct or Incorrect, I edited the text labels in Quizmaker so those two are blank, so nothing shows up during the review. All set now!
Hi mattzcoz, Thanks for your kind comments. Yes, editing the test labels in Quizmaker 2 is a good trick which I commented on too some time ago in another article “Cheating in Quizmaker” http://daveperso.mediaenglishonline.com/2008/09/30/cheating-in-quizmaker/ . However, the issue with the Printed Results not appearing unless the Review Quiz has been turned on does not apply with Quizmaker ‘09. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I would definitely recommend doing so. It is lightyears ahead of Quizmaker 2 in terms of functionality and customization ! Regards
Hi Dave,
I am pretty new to the whole Elearning community. I am the system administrator for our Desire 2 Learn LMS, the creator of many internal learning vignettes, the possessor of all of our Articulate knowledge, and the proud new owner of Adobe Captivate 4…ok introduction over. My question…I have read Gabe’s blog about this, but there must be a Dave way to accomplish this that is elegant and utilizes the skill set I posses.
1.) How do I create a certificate of completion that can be filled in after a course or quiz completion and…
2.) That after the fact can be printed if a user comes back to a “landing page” that will be customized for this purpose. The landing page will be behind a login and password that will contain the Articulate course and after they complete the course they will upon subsequent login see their certificate offered for printing without entering the course…seems like it should be pretty easy…I barely know how to explain it to our developers.
This is great and explained very well – is there something similar when published to an LMS? I want to print a certificate (including logo/image) that includes the participant’s name, course name and date the user passed a quiz
[...] Customizing the Printed Results in Quizmaker ‘09 [...]
Hi James. You could use the same technique on an LMS but students would still be required to enter their name again. Quizmaker ‘09 would not pick up the name of the user on the LMS. Certificates are often built into the LMS itself. Do you not have this function on yours? The SCORM LMS would pick up the scores from the SCORM compatible Quizmaker and create a certificate based on those details and the name of the user logged on the LMS.
Hi Dave
Very helpful tipsfor me , my only concern is I defined my report as report.html file but I dont want to have the review quiz button. Is it possible to hide it or remove it.
Hi Sylvie,
You can remove the review quiz button from within Quizmaker. Just uncheck the “Allow user to review quiz” option.
I would like to add a print button to the quiz results page that comes up after selecting the print button on the results page. Rather than having the individual have to go to File and drop down the print selection. Is this a possibility on the report.html page???
Thanks,
Stacy
Wonderful article!
A problem, I used your file and put forward slashes before document.write, number 4, 5, 7, 12, 13, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22.
When I complete the quiz and print, I only get top box, I need the students responses per question for later remedial training. Help!
Hi Michelle, Is your report printing normally before you make any edits to the report file? There is an issue with Printed Results in Internet Explorer 8 as far as I can see. (You want to make sure you are using the Quizmaker update 5).
OUR SUPPORT INFO
The Print Results option at the end of quiz will show blank quiz results (Date/Time header only) when all of the following conditions are met in order:
1. The end user is using IE8.
2. The quiz was taken at least once and the Print Results was used at least once.
3. The Quiz browser tab or IE8 browser window was closed but the Results window or tab is left open.
4. The quiz is relaunched and the Print Results was used again.
This is a known issue in Quizmaker ‘09 – Update 5 that has been forwarded to our Quality Assurance Team for further review.
To workaround this issue, close the Print Results Tab from IE8 before attempting to Print results again.
If it is just happening with the file you copied from this article, then I wonder if you didn’t make a mistake somewhere. Let me know and I’ll see if we can figure it out.