Backing Up A Course

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We recommend that you backup your Moodle course before making big changes or at the end of each term. Doing so will:

  • ensure the backup preserves the latest version of your course, and
  • provides immediate access to your content should you need to restore it.

Provisioned courses will remain in Moodle for 2 years. If you wish to keep course content beyond 2 years, you need to save the course backup locally or restore it to a course in your staging area.

If you did not back up your course and it is no longer available in Moodle, you can request the backup file for your course by submitting an OLET ticket. Please include the term, year, course number, and section number in your request.

Start on the course page that you want to backup

Scroll to the top of the main page of your course.

Click the More item from the secondary navigation.

Select Course reuse.

NOTE: This page will default to the Import option in the drop-down menu which is not what we’re after.

Select Backup from the drop-down menu

Leave all the settings in their default

Scroll to the bottom of the page

Click the Jump to final step button

Wait a moment for the backup process to complete.

Once it is finished, you will be taken to the Complete screen.

Click on the Continue button.

You will be taken to the Import a backup file page

Click on the Download link for the course you just backed up

If the Save As dialogue appears, choose where you would like to save the file, and the file name you would like to use. Then click Save.

NOTE: If a dialogue box does not appear the file was likely saved to your downloads folder by default. You will need to move and rename the file later.