Import guidelines: Characters, symbols, formats, and images

Supported characters and formats

• Subscripts, superscripts
• Greek letters — Use the Symbol palette only (see the next section about symbols)
• Symbols — Except for keyboard symbols like plus, minus, equal, greater than, and less than, use the Symbol palette only (see the next section about symbols)
• Tables.
  However, formatting like bold or italic across multiple cells only imports correctly in the first cell.
• Lists — Bullet icons may look different

Unsupported characters and formats

• Paragraph, character (like bold or italic), or table styles
• Font styles
• Autonumbering and styles for questions and answers
• Borders and columns (turn off)
• Page numbers (turn off)
• Color
• Tabs in paragraphs, lists, or tables
• Page and section breaks
• Manual line breaks (created by pressing Shift + Enter)

After you import your file, use the Simple Editor to add or change characters or formats that the Mastering import process doesn't support.

• To add symbols or characters that aren't on a standard keyboard, use a program that has an "insert symbol" function, and add each symbol from the program's palette. Do NOT select the Symbol font and then enter characters from the keyboard, or apply the Symbol font to characters already entered. Symbols will look fine in your original file, but they won't always import correctly.

• For Word 2007 symbols, follow these steps:

1. Select Insert on the toolbar, and choose the arrow beside Symbol on the right.
2. Choose More Symbols.
3. Beside Font, select Symbol.
4. Select the symbol to enter, and choose Insert.

• Check all expressions, equations, and symbols after importing. Whether these characters import correctly depends on the coding that your word processor used to produce them. You may have to open the question in the Simple Editor to add these characters after importing.
• For questions that include many formats or styles that you have to remove, use the program's "reveal codes" feature if it has one, to more easily see the formats to delete. (For example, in Word, select Format then Reveal Formatting.) Alternatively, you may find it easier to do one of the following.

• Save the file as plain text (.txt) or HTML (.htm), make edits, and then save it as an RTF file.
• Copy the text into an editor such as NotePad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac), make edits, and then save it as an RTF file.

It's best to add images into your content after you've imported your questions into the Simple Editor. Images can be troublesome when you batch import content into Mastering.

You can embed true images (.jpg, .gif. or .png) in the questions, answers, and follow-up text you import.

• You can add an image anywhere after the question's number. If you insert an image before the number, the image may not appear in the imported file. Images import best if you place them in a separate paragraph, with no surrounding text. For example, create a new paragraph, paste the image, and create another paragraph for any text following the image.
• While .bmp and .svg images are also supported, they don't scale well so results can vary.
  Windows meta files (.wmf) and any drawings created within programs not specifically designed to generate true graphics—for example, word processing programs or presentation programs such as PowerPoint® are NOT supported.