TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preamble
The VASS import requires an additional column for ‘Focus Area’ (impacting four Year 12 courses ONLY). Given the majority of courses don’t require this information, the 12th column in the VASS export from E10 is empty. VASS is reading this column as ‘infinite’ in length but will only accept a maximum of 3 characters, which causes an error upon importing. This article explains how to alter the E10 VASS export to make it suitable for importing.
Preparing the export
The following steps should be performed in a copy of your timetable file. Step 1:
In a copy of the file, delete any classes for the courses listed below. Alternatively, perform a search in the export file for the codes and delete those rows but the first method is more efficient.
- MC043/4 – Music Performance, 3 & 4
- MC053/4 – Music Investigation, 3 & 4
- TT033/4 – Text & Traditions, 3 & 4
- IT033/4 – Software Development, 3 & 4
Students studying any of the above listed courses will need to be added to VASS manually and will not be included in the export. Step 2:
Run the VASS Export report from E10 (Reports > Exports).
Open a copy of the VASS export (generally called StudentPrograms.txt) from within Microsoft Excel. The file should immediately open using the Text Import Wizard (Delimited option). Click 'Next'.
Step 3:
Select 'Other' and enter the pipe character '|' - click 'Next'.
'Other' should be the only Delimiter checked Step 4:
Click on each of the columns containing either DET School Code or the VCAA School Code and ensure the column data format is set to 'Text' for each of these columns to maintain any leading zeroes. This is generally the first two and last two columns in the data preview. Click 'Finish'.
Step 5:
Delete the first empty (12th) column to the far right (Column L). This column will appear empty, but this is a necessary step in the process as it removes the imaginary field and defines the end of each line.
File > Save As a .csv file (comma delimited).
Step 6:
Navigate to the csv file using File Explorer. Right-click on the file and select 'Edit with Notepad++.
Making sure your cursor is at the very beginning of the text, press CTRL F and select the 'Replace' tab. Find and replace commas (,) with pipes (|) and select 'Replace All'.
Step 7:
File > Save As a normal .txt file.
Importing to VASS
Use this altered .txt file for your Student Programs import to VASS.
This process removes the imaginary field and defines the end of each line as being prior to it, so that VASS ignores it when importing.
Don't forget to add any student records for the four courses listed at the beginning of this article into VASS manually. 
Further Reading: E10 - VASS Export guide for Victorian schools
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