Importing/Exporting Questions

When viewing exams, the Import/Export Questions button at the top of the screen will allow you to import and export questions to and from the Question Bank. All questions may be exported, or filters may be used to export a sample of questions.

Exporting Questions

Exporting All Exam Questions

All questions within a Question Bank can be exported in plain text format by clicking the Export All button. It will automatically download through your browser which you can then open and save to your computer.

Exporting Selected Exam Questions

The Export Selected Only button can be used to select a sample of questions to export. By default, ALL questions will be exported but the selection can be narrowed down using filters.

Questions can be filtered by Question Type, Question Categories, Question Tags, and/or Exams within the course.

If you exclude a question type, category, or tag these will also be excluded from the specific exam choice filter, or any other filter that is selected. So, if you want to export all questions from an exam, it is best to leave all other filters fully selected.

When selecting exams, remember, this will export the questions from within the selected exam/s, it will not copy the full exam/s. To copy a full exam use the Export Exam feature.

Importing Questions

Once a questions have been exported, that file can be used to import questions in SOLE plain text format.

To import, under Import SOLE plain text format click Choose File, select your plain text document, then click the green Submit button.

You have the option of importing questions from a plain text document (in Notepad for example) that has been manually created as well. This may be useful when creating a set of new questions because multiple may be added at once. SOLE import will only accept a correctly formatted txt file or a zip of txt files (LXR Format). 

Click Here to view the plain text template that can be used to manually create an Import Document.

Be sure to adhere to the following guidelines:

  1. The TYPE, TITLE, and TEXT texts are required for all question types.
  2. Answer(s) are required for all question types except for essay (E). All other fields (CATEGORY, TAGS, RANDOM, FEEDBACK, FEEDBACKCORRECT, FEEDBACKWRONG) are optional.
  3. While RANDOM is optional, leaving this field blank will result in a random answer order by default.
  4. Questions are separated by a “–“on a new line.
  5. TEXT and FEEDBACK* fields may extend to multiple lines.

You will then need to fill in the following plain text fields:

  • Type: Code indicating the intended question type. Options are MC (Multiple Choice), FIB (Fill in the Blank), TF (True/False), M (Matching), E (Essay), MS (Multiple Select), O (Ordering - beta), and HS (Hotspot - beta).
  • Title: The title of the question
  • Text: The text of the question. May include html and extend to multiple lines. For FIB a set of '[]' is required to indicate the blank.
  • Category: The category of the question. Should be a single word or short phrase.
  • Tags: A comma separated list of tags for the question.
  • Random: Enter True to randomize the list of answer options or False to keep the list of answers in the same order you have entered them (this can also be left out all together if all questions need to be randomized).
  • A: An answer for the question. See the answers section below for more details.
  • Feedback: A message for the student shown when the exam is finished.
  • Feedback correct: A message for the student shown when the exam is finished, if they answered correctly.
  • Feedback incorrect: A message for the student shown when the exam is finished, if they answered incorrectly.

You must also define the answer(s) for each question:

  • For MC each choice is listed with an A: with the correct answer indicated by a prefixed *.
  • For FIB each possible answer is indicated with an A:
  • For TF only the correct answer is indicated (either A:True or A:False).
  • For M Each pair is indicated with an A: with the left and right side of the match separated by a | (vertical bar or 'pipe' character)
  • Essay questions have no answers.
  • For MS each choice is listed with an A: with the correct answer/s indicated by a prefixed *.
  • For O each item is listed with an A: and the items should be listed in the correct order.
  • For HS is it recommended to create them manually because the area cannot be accurately selected within an import. However, they can be exported from one course and imported into another course.

Once complete, you can import the plain text document.

You will then see the total number of questions and the number of questions inserted at the top of the screen as well as a list of the questions that successfully imported that you can review. The questions will automatically be added to the Question Bank.

If there is an error you will see this notated at the top of screen and a light red box will appear alerting you to the error. You can also scroll down to see the affected question and the error message.

These questions will either need to be fixed in your import file or developed through the question bank. You can also print the error report as a reference by clicking the dark red button to the right of the screen.

Blackboard Plain Text Format

Export Questions in Blackboard plain text format

You may want to export questions to be imported into Blackboard. For more information on this feature, please contact your SOLE administrator.

Import Questions from Blackboard

Use this feature to import questions into SOLE from Blackboard. Blackboard Import will accept a zip file exported directly from Blackboard Vista and Blackboard Learn 9 question banks.