Import and export FAQ

How do I import users?

See Upload users.

How do I import course data?

See Import course data.

How do I import and export grades?

Grade import (for Moodle 1.9 onwards).
Grade export

How do I import glossary entries?

For details see Import glossary entries.

Two very useful tools are:

David Fountain's Excel macro An Excel workbook with macros to create an XML file.
Yasu Imao's Moodle glossaryXMLconverter_html 4 A JavaScript based converter, works directly in your browser.

How do I import and export database entries?

See

How can I enable Excel export for students?

With the Database activity you have the ability to allow students to export all the data in the following formats: CSV, Excel and ODS (OpenDocument Spreadsheet from OpenOffice).

With this functionality students can choose to export the data of all fields or only of selected fields. (Picture fields cannot be exported.)

However, this feature is not enabled by default for students. You need to override the student permissions for the Database activity and choose 'Allow' for the permission to 'View presets from all users'.

This will result in the 'Export' tab being visible to students in the Database activity.

Also see this thread for a discussion on this.

How do I import and export questions?

See Import questions and Export questions.

OpenOffice template for creating questions in GIFT format: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=20705&parent=168385

MS Word template for creating questions in GIFT format: http://www.soberit.hut.fi/sprg/resources/moodle/GiftConverter.html
Excel to GIFT format export tool: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=66660
The complete list: Word processors and Spreadsheets tools that create GIFTs

Importing "GIFT" format files: https://www.acquin.org/moodle/help.php?file=formatgift.html&module=quiz

ATutor to Moodle converter - see http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=115338.

Eoin Campbell is working on a XSLT based import/export module for Word - stay tuned! See also his website http://www.moodle2word.net

Which formats are used for importing questions?

If you want to create questions outside of Moodle these two text based formats might be the most important:

GIFT - Moodle 'proprietary' text format for import and export. Reasonably comprehensive.

See GIFT format.

Here is a 2-column GIFT format reference sheet: GIFT Reference Sheet

Moodle XML - Moodle 'proprietary' xml format for import and export. Very comprehensive.

You find the complete list of supported formats under Import questions.

Which file formats can I use?

What encodings should I use?

The recommended standard encoding for all Moodle files is UTF-8.

See Importing Entries Using a Text File for an example where a UTF-8 file with BOM caused Database Activity entries not being imported. See also MDL-9075 ("User Upload Failure when file contains UTF-8 BOM").

Documentation