Import and export FAQ

How do I import users?

See Upload users.

How do I export a list of users?

Go to Settings>Site administration>Users>Accounts>Bulk user actions and select the users you wish to export. From the dropdown "With selected users", choose "download" and choose the type of file you wish to download from text, ODS or Excel.

Another way is to export a list from the gradebook in a course. The fields you seem to get are:

First name, Surname, ID number, Institution, Department, Email address, Course total

How do I import course data?

See Import course data.

How do I import and export grades?

How do I import glossary entries?

For details see Import glossary entries.

A useful tool is

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 Building Database

How can I enable Excel export for students?

With the Database activity you have the ability to allow students to export the data in CSV or ODS (OpenDocument Spreadsheet from OpenOffice) format, both of which will open up in MS Excel.

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' from Settings>Database administration>Permissions.

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.

Moodle XML converter Free online service to create quizzes and glossaries from existing files.

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

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

Eoin Campbell is working on a XSLT based import/export module for Word - stay tuned!

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.

There are also commercial software creating question files that can be imported into Moodle:

TestGen can export question using the "Blackboard 6.x-9.x" format and these zip files can be imported in Moodle using the "Blackboard" import format.

Examview recent versions can also create Blackboard zip files that Moodle "Blackboard" import format is able to import.

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

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").

Some of this information is collected at UTF-8 and BOM.

Documentation