Importing & Exporting Questions

If you already have questions in a document or spreadsheet, you can bring them into a bank in bulk instead of typing them one at a time.

Import questions into a bank

Open the bank and click Import. A window opens titled Upload file.
Click Download Sample File and use it as your template.
Fill in your questions in the sample format.
Drag the file into the upload area, or click to browse.
Review the parsed questions on the review step, then confirm.

You will see "Question created successfully" and the questions appear in the bank.

File requirements

Supported formats: DOC and CSV.
Maximum file size: 30 MB.
One file at a time.

Guidelines for uploading files

The upload window lists the rules your file has to follow:

Date fields: dates must be in dd mmm yyyy format, for example 04 Apr 2023.
Dropdowns: values are case sensitive. John Smith is not the same as john smith.
Custom fields: custom field columns are prefixed with #custom_, for example #custom_native language.

Do not rename or reorder the sample file's columns. The importer matches on the column headers, so a renamed header is either ignored or rejected.

Imported questions inherit the difficulty of the bank you are importing into. If you need a mix of difficulties, import into separate banks.

Check the review step

The last step of the import shows every parsed question exactly as it will be stored, including options and the marked correct answer. Nothing is saved until you confirm.

Do a test run with three or four rows first. It is much faster to fix the format on a small file than to import two hundred questions and then correct them one by one.

Export a bank to CSV

Click Export as CSV on the bank screen to download its questions.

The button is disabled when the bank has no questions.

Exporting is useful for reviewing a bank offline, for sharing it with a subject expert for checking, and as a rough backup before you make bulk changes.

What you cannot do

There is no way to import questions directly from another question bank. To reuse questions, either link the existing bank to your exercise, or export it to CSV and import that file into the new bank.
There is no import at the Question Bank list level. Imports always happen inside a specific bank.

What's next

Continue to Using Question Banks in Online Exercises.