Where your work is kept

Your gradebook is on your computer, and it stays there. There is no server behind this app, so there is nowhere else for it to be.

This page is worth reading once, in September, rather than in June when you need it.

There is no save button

Every edit is recorded as you make it, and written into your file a moment later.

That order is deliberate. If your file happens to be open in another program, on a drive that has been unplugged, or on a disk that is full, your work is already safe on the computer and the file catches up when it can. The app tells you when that has happened instead of failing quietly.

Where the copies are

Settings, under Sync, lists every place a copy of your gradebook is kept, says exactly where each one is, and lets you move it.

The copy that always exists is the one in the app itself, on this computer.

Saved File is a file of your own, and on Windows and macOS it is switched on from the moment you first open the app, in your Documents folder, with nothing for you to set up. On a Chromebook you pick the file yourself the first time.

Google Drive is the optional one, and it has its own page.

These are all the same gradebook, not different ones. The app keeps them level with each other and never asks you which is the real one. The only time it asks you anything is when the same gradebook was changed in two places at once, because choosing for you there would mean throwing away somebody's afternoon.

One name covers every copy. Rename your gradebook in Settings and each copy is renamed with it.

Backups

The app keeps dated backups for you, and Settings has a switch for it under Backups. They are written the first time you open the app each day and again as you leave, and never more than once an hour.

Say where they should go under Saved Backup Location. Your school drive, or wherever you already keep documents, is a good answer. A backup is the only copy that survives losing the device, which is the whole reason it is separate from your gradebook file.

Restoring is in the same place: pick a dated backup from the list, or use Restore from a file to open one you saved yourself. Restoring replaces everything in the current gradebook, and the app says so and asks before it does it.

Carrying a class somewhere else

A single class can be saved as a template and opened somewhere else, from Setup, then Class. That is how you carry a course into next year, or hand it to a colleague who teaches the same thing.

What differs by computer

On Windows and macOS everything above works without your having to think about it.

On a Chromebook it works the same way, though Chrome may ask you once, when you come back, whether the app may still write to your file. If you keep that file in Google Drive, turn on Available offline so you can mark work without Wi-Fi.

Firefox and Safari, used as browsers, cannot keep a gradebook in a file at all. Their makers have not built that. There, your gradebook lives in the browser on that one computer, backups have to be saved by hand, and the app tells you so rather than pretending otherwise. If Firefox or Safari is what you have, the desktop installer is the better answer.

Erasing it

Settings has Start over, which erases the gradebook on this computer. It asks first, and it says plainly that a backup file is the only way back.