Moodle: Course Backup and Restore

Backing up a course

To backup a course

• Go into the course.
• At the top of your course page, click More.
• In the menu, choose Course Reuse. 
• In the drop down menu on the left hand side, click Backup. 
• Click jump to final step and wait as your backup file is created. 
• After the file has been created, click Continue. You will be taken to a page where you can restore and/or download your backup file. 

It is against FERPA and College Policies for faculty to keep student records, and therefore faculty are not allowed to include Users in their Moodle course backup files.

Downloading your backup file

Once you have a backup of your course, we recommend you download that backup file and save it to your favorite file storage location. After you complete the backup, you should be taken to the screen that shows you your backup files. Click the download link to save the file to your Downloads folder.

If you do not download the backup file immediately, you can always go More⇒Course Reuse⇒Restore, to access your course backup file.

Restoring a course from a backup

After backing up your course, you can choose to restore a course to using this backup file.

• Go into the course.
• At the top of your course page, click More.
• In the menu, choose Course Reuse. 
• In the drop down menu on the left hand side, click Restore. 
• Upload the backup file or choose a file in the course backup area or user private backup area and click Restore. This will take you through a series of steps to restore the course from this file.
  1. Confirm - Check that everything is as required then click the Continue button
  2. Destination - Choose whether you would like to merge courses or if you would like to delete the old course material and create a new course with the Backup file, the click Continue. 
  3. Settings - Select activities, blocks, filters and possibly other items as required then click the Next button
  4. Schema - Select/deselect specific items and amend the course name, short name and start date if necessary then click the Next button
  5. Review - Check that everything is as required, using the Previous button if necessary, then click the 'Perform restore' button
  6. Complete - Click the Continue button

Questions? 

If you need further assistance or have specific questions that aren't covered in this article, please don't hesitate to reach out for personalized support by submitting a Moodle Support ticket. 

Acknowledgement 

Created by Carly Born, Fri 7/23/21.  Last updated by Paul Sam Johnson-Lacoss, Wed 11/29/23.