Import questions

Moodle provides a number of different formats to import questions into question banks. Some enable imports to be made from proprietary quiz software, others provide questions to be imported from human-readable text files and others provide Moodle specific formats to enable transfer of questions between quiz banks.

In the case of the text formats (in particular GIFT), once you get to know a format, it may be easier to simply type the questions into a text file than to use the web interface. You can just keep typing instead of waiting for new web pages to load for each question.

The available formats vary with the version of Moodle and if it is a quiz or lesson module.

Question formats

• GIFT - Moodle 'proprietary' text format for import and export. Reasonably comprehensive.
• Moodle XML - Moodle 'proprietary' xml format for import and export. Very comprehensive.
• Aiken - This format is an easy way of writing multiple-choice questions for import.
• Missing Word -If you’re going to write a lot of missing word multiple choice questions, the missing word format is an easy way to create them.
• AON - This format is the same as the missing word format, except it creates matching questions from the multiple choice questions. Please note that from Moodle 1.8 it will no longer be part of the standard Moodle.
• Blackboard - From Moodle 1.7 onwards, if you're converting from Blackboard to Moodle, you can export your course and then import the question pools into Moodle using the Blackboard format.
• WebCT - In Moodle 1.7 this format supports importing multiple choice and short answers questions from WebCT.
• Course Test Manager - This format enables you to import questions from the Course Test Manager from Course Technology.
• Embedded Answers (Cloze) - This format is a multiple question, multiple answer question with embedded answers. They can be a bit tricky to develop, but they are a unique way of asking questions.

Character encoding

Prior to Moodle 1.6 the question file was assumed to be encoded in the same way as the language being used within the Moodle site. With Moodle 1.6 and onwards it is assumed that the imported file is encoded in UTF8. If it is not an external tool must be used to change the encoding. Note that if only basic 'latin' characters are used, then the coding issue can generally be ignored. Be particularly careful when creating questions using Microsoft Word. For reasons best known to themselves, Microsoft used their own encoding for some characters and this is likely to break the import.

See also

• The help file available from the help button next to the import file button gives a lot of detail about each format.
• Using Moodle escaping problem in gift import? forum discussion
• Converting files to UTF-8