How to import Word Doc into Moodle as a Question Bank

Teachers already have a repository of worksheets in Word document format that they use for in-person learning. If Moodle quizzes can be created from those existing Word document, then it will save a massive amount of time .

In this article, we will go through 2 ways you can quickly import your Word document worksheets into Moodle, one of the most popular LMS in the world.

Moodle offers a huge variety of formats you can use to import your quizzes in its question bank,

• Aiken Format
• Blackboard
• Embedded answers (cloze)
• Examview
• GIFT format
• Missing word format
• Moodle XML format
• WebCT format

For this method, only 2 format would be relevant for us -- namely GIFT format and Aiken format.

Although there's no direct way for you import a docx worksheet into moodle as question bank (no LMS in the world has this functionality), we can always take advantage of the 2 formats to do this indirectly. This method we are going to do would involve some copying and pasting from our word document into a text file and format it according to the specification required by those import format.

Let's go through how the 2 formats work.


GIFT format is a 'proprietary' Moodle text format that allows anyone to use a text editor to write multiple-choice, true-false, short answer, matching missing word and numerical questions in a simple format that can be imported.

The basic anatomy of the GIFT Format goes like this:


Questions can have optional question title and they are defined using the double colons. In this case it is "Q1", but it could be anything. Following the question title, you would have the question text. And in this example, after the question text we have the MCQ options that is defined within the curly braces. The tilde sign (~) defines one wrong option and the equal sign (=) defines the correct option.

For True-false question, it can be formatted like this:
In this example, we left out the optional question title that is defined by the double colon, so the question starts with the question text and it followed by the answer true defined by the curly braces.

For short answer question, it can be formatted like this:
You can define multiple correct answers using the equal sign. However, you are not allowed the defined wrongs answers using tilde sign. Students response that is not an exact match with the correct answer will be automatically marked wrong.

Finally, for essay question where there is no right answers, it can be formatted like so: Nothing is allowed between the curly braces. Not even a whitespace.

That's all you need to know about GIFT, if you want to find out more you can visit Moodle. Otherwise, let's move on to the next format.


Aiken format is good format to use if you only want to create MCQs only. The best way to explain the format is to simply look at an example of it.
And that's all there is to it. Its a really simple format.


Converting into either GIFT or Aiken format is as simple as copying and pasting the relevant sections of your quiz into the text editor and formatting it appropriately. Once you get the hand of it, it is way faster than trying to creating questions one-by-one using the Moodle interface.

One limitations of this method however, is that if you have images inside your question, then it cannot be used. There's currently not possible to append images into these format.

Here's a video where it shows you how to convert into Aiken format if you need something more visual.


I hope you have found this article useful. It is meant to be whirlwind tour to quickly get you going.

If however you find that this method is too tedious or time-consuming, then perhaps consider giving GETMARKED a try. We are able to convert any Word document quiz into a Moodle question bank without you having to make any edits at all.