I feel like an idiot, but I will ask anyway. Can a person upload a ratings report from WIN TD? If so, where do I look for instructions. If not, I hope I can return it 
New to WIN TD
Is the question how to upload a tournament to the USCF Td/affiliate site? If so the answer is yes you can.
Is the question can you load a USCF supplement update into a database in Win TD? The answer is yes you can.
There is a help menu in Win TD that can list the steps for you although the instructions (in my experience) are a little unclear in places.
If you need additional help post a specific question and you will get replies I am sure.
I am trying to upload a tournament report to the TD/Affiliate site. Currently I am only able to create a file to mail in with a disk. I am not able to make WIN TD create the necessary files.
I hope this clarification helps. Appreciate any help as I look at the WIN TD help section.
thanks
Thanks for the help. Knowing it could be done was all that was needed.
Go to uschess.org/TD_Affil and read the information there, specifically the guide to getting started and the Frequently Asked Questions.
Mike’s suggestion is very good.
Here is the short version:
-
You must be an approved TD for the affiliate sponsoring the eent.
-
You must be able to sign in as a TD in the TD/Affiliate area.
-
You can use the same files on the disk you created to submit a tournament on-line. Just Use WinTD to create/save the files on your hard drive. Make a note of where that file is located. (reports—>Make USCF reports—> next screen choose “write files to” and Hard Drive then continue to fill in the required info).
-
After you sign in as a TD/Affiliate choose the link in the left column “Tournament Rating Reports” and follow the directions.
But first read the material Mike has suggested to make sure you understand the hoops you need to jump through. This short version does not address those hoops.
You’re not an idiot. They don’t tell you this stuff when they sign you up to be a club TD. They don’t put it in the packet that goes out to club TDs – at least they didn’t when I signed up circa two years ago. You get to work through it yourself, or else find some wiser TD to mentor you through it.
Now, none of this is all that difficult, but you have to find the help page in WinTD (or Swiss Sys) that tells how to save off the files for USCF, deal with a set of cryptically named files that are hard to find on your hard drive (unless you’re an aspiring nerd like me), figure out how to sign up online as an affiiliate, figure out how to sign up online as a TD, get those two signups coordinated (affiliate must OK the TD), find the right thing in the TD menu to click on, etc., etc.
There’s no manual with screen shots for doing this. It’s a seat-of-the-pants learning experience: you first get to see all the USCF screens when you’ve uploaded your first tournament. You’ll probably mess up a few things in the process and you may have to re-do or correct stuff, but you will not crash the computer in Crossville. Be persistent. When it asks for your credit card number, you know you’ve gotten somewhere.
You are a chess player! If you can handle a pawn endgame, you can do this.
And once you figure it out, it works like a dream and you will have your tournaments rated before your players can get home and look up their results.
If you’d like to write a guide to beginning TDs as to how to use WInTD (and/or SwisSys) and submit raitng reports, I’m sure we can find somewhere for it on the website.
I’m probably not the best person to write it, I know too much about how it works.
I haven’t done this for over a year, now, but to the best of my memory, here’s a high level look at how:
In WinTD there’s an option to “Make USCF Report”. In My version it’s under the reports menu, but yours may be different because I have an old version.
Once you start down that course, filling in the blanks from the first screen with details of the event, the second screen gives you the opportunity to save the files to a floppy or the hard drive. If you have a floppy handy you can use one, or select the harddrive.
The result will be a selection of files. Mike’s upload form on the website lists the name of each of these files, just match the name to the upload fields. (If you don’t know where they got to on your system, use the search function to find them.)
Feel free to ask more questions. If I need to, I can always dig out my old copy of WinTD and walk you through it, but I might run into trouble uploading, as my TD card has lapsed.
That actually sounds like fun. I like writing documentation and don’t get to do it often. Sadly, that task will have to go at the bottom of my “stuff to do for chess when I get around to it.” It is a very long list (though not as long as yours, I’m sure), but I will put it on there.
WinTD allows you to download and run their program for free as a demo, the only restriction being (if I remember correctly) you can’t upload tournament files to USCF. You may want to check if you’ve purchased the program to enable this function.
The other step that catches me from time to time is to make sure that, before creating the USCF report, you set the Directory set properly, that’s where it will save the files if you specify to save them to the hard drive. From the files pull down menu, select Directory and browse to where you want them saved for later upload.
Grant Neilley
Thanks for all the help and info—I will put it to use
Start a “screencast” program, then perform the actions in WinTD as normal; and finally stop the screencast program. 
Post the movie on the UsChess.org web, or on YouTube.com with only the link added to UsChess.org.
There are some free screencast programs on the web. Or HyperCam costs $35.
Use can use the free Windows Movie Maker to edit and clean up the movie, if necessary. Or just reshoot the screencast.
Or very good is Camtasia Studio which costs $175, and which does it all.
Now there’s a cool idea.
When I got to the “upload tournament to the USCF site” part of it, I wonder if it ought to be dummy data, as opposed to a real tournament with real IDs and player names? Or am I being too fastidious?
(That’s very easy to fix if I’m doing a print/PDF version of this. I simply do screen shots next time I rate a tournament, then overwrite the real names/numbers with fake ones.)
I don’t see any problem with using the real data. After all, anyone who knows your USCF ID, whether they’re a member or not, can look up the real information on MSA.
Alex Relyea
Here is a tutorial on how to update WinTD for the USCF database. It was done on Camtasia. If there is enough interest I am sure Dr. Aman would be willing to create one for uploading results to the USCF. http://cpu-solutions.com/Tutorials/SupplementUpdate/WinTD-USCF-SupplementUpdate.html
That is pretty neat.