Course restore

Restoring a course backup

A course backup file (.mbz) may be restored from within any existing course for which you have permission. During the restore process, you will be given the option to restore as a new course or into an existing course. See the screencast Course restore for information on how to restore your course.

Note (1) If you are restoring a course with user data (forum posts for example) then be careful when setting the course start date as all data will display within the same timeframe but from the new start date. So if your course originally began in 2010 and participants posted in 2012, then if you restore your new course with a start date of 2014, these forum posts will display with a date of 2016, ie, 2 years after the original course start date. See MDL-9367 and MDL-44961.

Note (2) If your new course has fewer sections than the course you are restoring, the extra sections will appear as "orphaned activities". Increase the number of sections in the new course to make them visible.

Note (3) If you are restoring a course from a different Moodle site and you obtain the error message "Trying to restore user (admin) from backup file will cause conflict", you can enable the setting 'Allow admin conflict resolution' in Site admin > Courses > Backups > General import defaults

1. Go to Administration > Front page settings > Restore (if you have front page permissions) or Administration > Course administration > Restore (if you have an empty course to restore into.)
2. Upload the backup file or choose a file in the course backup area or user private backup area and click Restore
3. Confirm - Check that everything is as required then click the Continue button
4. Destination - Choose whether the course should be restored as a new course or into an existing course then click the Continue button
5. Settings - Select activities, blocks, filters and possibly other items as required then click the Next button
6. Schema - Select/deselect specific items and amend the course name, short name and start date if necessary then click the Next button
7. Review - Check that everything is as required, using the Previous button if necessary, then click the 'Perform restore' button
8. Complete - Click the continue button

Restoring from course and category management screens

Users with permission to access Site administration > Courses > Manage courses and categories or Site administration > Courses > Manage courses and categories > (Category name) can restore courses from here:

Restoring from course/management.php

Restoring from the category management screen

Course restore capabilities

• Create users on restore
• Configure restore options
• Restore activities
• Restore courses
• Restore sections
• Restore from files targeted as hub
• Restore from files targeted as import
• Roll activity configuration dates on restore
• Upload files to backup areas
• Restore user data
• Restore courses from automated backups

See also

• Restoring file aliases
• Administrators can use MOOSH to bulk backup and restore courses from CLI