Moodle 2 - Wofford Collegewebs.wofford.edu/whisnantdm/Training/Moodle/Importing Courses... ·...

Moodle 2: Importing a Previous Course – 2013

Updated: 21-August-2013

Moodle 2 Importing Courses from Moodle 1.9

You can import the information from the previous version of Moodle to the new version through

the Backup and Restore process. 1

PC: I recommend using the Firefox or Chrome browsers. Internet Explorer 10 seems to

work OK with Moodle, but IE 9 does not.

Mac: I recommend using the Safari 6 browser. Safari 5 does not work well.

A. PC and Mac: Backing up a Previous Course

In myWofford, go to the previous version of Moodle and find the

course you want to import into Moodle 2.0.

In the previous version of the course, click on Backup in the

“Administration” menu

1 If you have questions, please contact Dave Whisnant

Email: [email protected]

Mobile: 864-804-9810

Home: 864-582-6918

mailto:[email protected]



You will see a list of activities, resources, etc. that

you included in your previous course site. You may

uncheck any of these that you do not want to be

included on the new course site in Moodle 2.

Click on Continue at the bottom of the page.

You will see two more pages. Click Continue for each page.

Eventually you will see a list of backup files that

includes a zipped file for the course.

Make sure that the zipped file is less than 100 MB

in size (the limit for the Restore operation).

If the zipped file is larger than 100 MB, see Appendices A and B at the end of

these instructions. You must reduce the file size of the Moodle course page

before going any farther.



B. PC Only –Downloading the Zip File to Your Computer

Click on the name of this zipped file to download it to

your computer.

You will need to know the location of the downloaded zipped file.

To find the Downloads folder, click on Computer under the Start

icon.

You probably will find the Downloads folder

under Favorites.

Leave this window open.



C. Mac Only – Downloading the Zip File to Your Computer

Using the Safari browser, CTRL-click on the name of the file. This

will open up a menu window.

In the menu window, click on Download Linked File.

You can locate the downloaded file by

clicking on the small arrow icon in the

upper right corner of the Safari window.

When you click on this icon, you will

see a list of downloaded files. Your

zipped file will be among those on the

list (and maybe the only one.)

Drag and drop the zipped file to the computer’s desktop.



D. PC and Mac: Restoring in Moodle 2

Back in myWofford, move to Moodle 2.

In Moodle 2, select the course into which you want to restore the backup file.

In the Settings block, click on Edit Settings in the “Course Administration”

menu.

Select the format you want and specify the number of weeks or topics in

your new course.2

Click on Save Changes at the bottom of the page

In the Settings block, Select Restore in the “Course Administration”

menu.

2 I am not sure this is necessary for a backup-restore process, but I like to do it for safety’s sake.



Drag and drop the zipped file from the Downloads folder (PC) or desktop (Mac) to the Import a

Backup File area. This drag and drop operation will not work with Internet Explorer 9.

PC:

Mac:

You should see the name of the zipped file in the text box.

Click on Restore.



You probably will

see a message about

this not being a

standard Moodle

file

Be not dismayed. Click on Continue.

Next, tell Moodle that you want to

Merge the backup course into this

course under “Restore into this course,”

IMPORTANT: DO NOT choose

“Delete the contents . . . .” This option

will delete all the students from your

course.

Click on Continue in the “Restore into this course” section.

Press Next twice and then Perform Restore. Eventually the previous course will be imported

into the new one.



E. Things That Are Not Restored3

1. Assignments

The assignment module has been re-written for Moodle 2.3, so Moodle 1.9 assignments are lost

when you restore the course in Moodle 2.3. Here is how I recommend handling assignments.

1. Import the Moodle 1.9 course into Moodle 2.3 as described above.

2. In Moodle 2.3, go to the gradebook.

a. Choose “Simple View” rather than “Grader Report”

b. Delete the assignments from the gradebook

c. Save the changes

3. Add new assignments in Moodle 2.3.

4. You can use copy the description of each assignment from the Moodle

1.9 page and paste it into the assignment on the Moodle 2.3 page

a. From myWofford, open both Moodle and Moodle 2

b. When you open both versions of Moodle, you

should see a tab for each version in the browser.

c. Open the appropriate course page for each

version of Moodle and move to the assignment

on each page.

d. You can copy text from the Moodle 1.9

assignment and paste it into the Moodle 2.3

assignment.

2. Discussion Forum Topics

Discussion forums will be restored, but without the discussion topics. The topics are user data,

which are not restored.

3 As of May 8, 2013



Appendix A: Removing Large Files from a Moodle Page If the original Moodle 1.9 page is greater than 100 MB in size, it cannot be imported into Moodle

2. In order to import the page, you will need to do three things on the original Moodle 1.9 page:

Identify the large files

Remove links to the large files

Remove the large files

You don’t need to remove all the large files – just enough to get under the 100 MB limit. It might

be a good idea to remove the large ones and replace them with smaller files, so you won’t have

this problem in the future.

1. Identifying the large files

In the original Moodle 1.9 page, click on the Files folder under the

Administration menu.

Look for the large files in the list and

jot down their names.



2. Removing the links to the large files

Back on the course page, find the links to these large files and remove them

by clicking on their X icon (in the editing mode).

3. Removing the large files

Unfortunately, removing a link to a file does not remove the file itself.

Again click on the Files folder under the Administration menu.

Check the checkbox to the left of

the file names of the large files.

At the bottom of the page, select Delete completely as the action for

the chosen files.

You will be asked to confirm that you want to delete the files.

Repeat the backup process for the new page without the large course files.



In the future it also will be a good idea to shrink the size of PowerPoint files so you will not run

into file size problems again. Appendix B explains how to do this.

Appendix B: Shrinking PowerPoint File Size PowerPoint files, particularly those containing images, can be quite large. It is a good idea to

shrink the size of these files so that it is possible to export your courses into each other year by

year. If the files are too large, you may not be able to do the export without complications.

Shrinking File Size on a PC

1. When you have the PowerPoint ready, select File, Save As

2. Save the file as a PDF document and select Minimum size (publishing online).

I tried this on a 32.5 MB PowerPoint with a lot of pictures and reduced it down to 6.3 MB

without visible degradation!



Shrinking File Size on a Mac

Shrinking the size of PowerPoint files on a Mac is a two-step process:

Save the file as a PDF document

Reduce the size of the PDF

1. When you have the PowerPoint ready, select File, Save As.

Save the PowerPoint file on the desktop in a PDF format.

2. Click on the icon of the PDF file to open it. This will open up a Preview of the PDF file.

3. Select File, Save As within Preview.

4. In the “Save as” window, select Reduce File Size as

the Quartz Filter.

Click on Save.

I tried this on the same 32.5 MB PowerPoint with a lot of pictures and reduced it down to 3.4

MB. The images were slightly degraded, but still were pretty good. Well worth the reduction in

size.

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