Colorado Mountain College E-Learning Resource Creating an RTF Document

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CMC Blackboard Resources Training Section

Creating an RTF Document and
Pasting It into the Blackboard Text Pane

Printable Version (Word Document) (PDF Document)

Converting your documents to RTF format is important whether you are pasting them into the Blackboard content pane or just providing your students access to documents using a link. RTF documents can be opened by most word processing software, e.g. Microsoft Works, etc.

It does not, however, maintain some of the more advanced capabilities, e.g. appending notes to the work submitted to you. Another option when maintaining the formatting is important is to convert your document to a PDF (Portable Document Format) and attaching it using the Blackboard “Browse” button. See the last visual provided in Step 9.

The following shows the steps taken to save a document, once completed, to an RTF format and how to paste the completed content into the Blackboard content pane. We have used the syllabus as an example. See also Using the Blackboard Text Pane for Content Entry for more information on pasting instructional content into the Blackboard content panes used when creating your course content.

Step 1:

Construct your document in Microsoft Word or other word processing software.

Creating a document in a word processing software

Step 2:

When saving your document, select “Rich Text Format (*.rtf) from the “Save as type” drop-down menu. Use the appropriate naming convention to name your file. Your file will be saved in rich text format with an extension of “.rtf”.

Saving document in RTF format

Step 3:

Close your word processing software.

Closing the word processing software

Step 4:

Open WordPad if you are using a PC.

Opening WordPad

Step 5:

Select File/Open in WordPad.

Opening the RTF file

Step 6:

Navigate to where your file has been saved. Double click on the file name to open the file in WordPad.

Selecting the RTF file to open

Step 7:

Select Edit/Select All to select all text in the document just opened.

Using Select All to select all document content

Step 8:

Select the Copy icon to copy all highlighted content into memory.

Copying text highlighted in WordPad to memory

Step 9:

Place your cursor inside the Blackboard content pane. Then, select the Copy icon to paste the content held in memory into this area.

Pasting content into Blackboard Text Pane

Sample of Content Pasted from WordPad into the Blackboard Content Pane
Result when RTF document content pasted into Blackboard Text Pane

NOTE: Images are not copied into this area. If an image is critical for the content delivered, convert your document to a PDF (Portable Document Format) using Adobe Acrobat Professional and attach the document using the Browse function in Blackboard. Your image will be maintained along with all other formatting.

Browsing to access a file to display in Blackboard