excel2moodle 0.9.0

A package for converting questions from a spreadsheet, to valid moodle-xml

excel 2 Moodle

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excel2moodle helps you to create moodle questions in less time. The idea is to write the questions data into a spreadsheet file, from which excel2moodle generates moodle compliant xml Files. All questions or a selection of questions can then be imported into moodle. Furthermore excel2moodle helps you generating semi-random Variables for parametric questions. This way you can generate a thousands of numeric questions based off a formula and a set of variables.

Concept

At the heart the excel2moodle is a simple key-value-pair "syntax", where the key is set once in the first spreadsheet column. Each key can be provided with a value for each question in its column. To enhance reusability, keys which are correct for more than one question can be set per category or for all questions.

Structure of the Spreadsheet

A settings sheet contains global settings to be used for all questions and categories. Another sheet stores metadata for the different categories of questions. And each category lives inside a separate sheet inside the spreadsheet document.

Getting Started

Installation

To get started with excel2moodle first have a look at the installation If you already have python and uv installed, it is as easy as running uv tool install excel2moodle.

Documentation

Once excel2moodle is installed you can checkout the example question sheet in the repository. You need to download all Files in the example directory and save them together.

Most steps are already documented as tutorials you can follow along.

And please have a look into the user Reference of the documentation. That part explains in more detail each part of defining a question.

Features

• Fully parametrized numeric questions:
  • Formulas for the calculated results can be coded into extensive python modules, which can be loaded.
• Question Preview:
  • This helps you when selecting the correct questions for the export.
• Equation Verification:
  • this tool helps you to validate the correct equation for the parametrized Questions.
• Variable Generation:
  • You can generate variables for the parametric Question to easily create hundreds of different variants of the same question.
• Export Options:
  • you can export the questions preserving the categories in moodle

Question Types

• Generate multiple Choice Questions:
  • The answers can be pictures or normal text
• Generate Numeric Questions
• Generate parametrized numeric Questions:
  • With the parametrization excel2moodle calculats the numeric answer from a given formula based on a set of variables.
• Generate parametrized cloze Questions

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Licensing and authorship

excel2moodle is lincensed under the latest GNU GPL license Initial development was made by Richard Lorenz, and later taken over by Jakob Bosse

Supporting

A special thanks goes to the Civil Engineering Departement of the Fachhochschule Potsdam where i was employed as a student associate to work on this project.

If You want to support my work as well, you can by me a coffee

Changelogs

0.9.0 (2025-11-02)

Bullet Points can be formatted by a template

documentation (3 changes)

• Restructured and improved documentation
• Wrote Tutorial on implementing NFM questions
• improved picture key documentatino

feature (2 changes)

• added bulletpoint template support
• preview of LaTex code using matplotlibs rendering capabilities

0.8.0 (2025-10-25)

feedbacking and raw bullet implemented

feature (3 changes)

• show the feedback in question preview as well
• added true and false answerfeedback for MC questions
• added rawBulletPoint for easy bullet Points

bugfix (1 change)

• fix warning about cloze points

documentation (2 changes)

• Added logLevel key to documentation and question_types code docs
• Update example Questions.ods

0.7.4 (2025-10-13)

hopefully final bulletPoint improvement

bugfix (2 changes)

• Fix opening spreadsheet in external app broken under windows
• Inserted space between number and unit of bulletPoints

0.7.3 (2025-10-12)

further bulletPoint improvements

No changes.

0.7.2 (2025-10-11)

small important bugfixes

improvement (2 changes)

• BulletPoints are decoded using regex to allow multi word names
• Restructured globals, renamed rawInput to rawData

bugfix (2 changes)

• Added the number do the mandatory tags because it is
• fixed assigning the first result to all clozes

0.7.1 (2025-10-04)

feedbacking improved

documentation (1 change)

• documentation improvement

feature (1 change)

• Added MC answer feedback support

0.7.0 (2025-09-30)

Rework of the equation checker done!

feature (1 change)

• finalized equation Checker

documentation (1 change)

• Documented feedback usages

improvement (1 change)

• MainWindow got a currentQuestion property

0.6.5 (2025-09-02)

Added Scripted Media Support now with the module

No changes.

0.6.4 (2025-09-02)

Added Scripted Media Support

feature (1 change)

• Added support for scripted Media content.

0.6.3 (2025-08-03)

Lots of small improvements made

improvement (3 changes)

• small logging improvements and error handling
• Make variable generator rules editable
• Variable generator only generates unique sets.

bugfix (3 changes)

• mixed parametric and non parametric Bullets are working now
• Loglevel setting is respected in spreadsheet file
• Treewidget variants count updated after variable generation

feature (2 changes)

• Category ID taken from any number in its name
• Implemented Update Check on Startup

0.6.2 (2025-08-02)

Adding export options and fixing cloze points bug

feature (4 changes)

• Added export options to include all Question Variants and generate report
• Implemented export dialog generator method
• Answer Feedback strings settable in sheet
• Inverted result and feedback for NFM & Cloze questions

improvement (1 change)

• Missing settings sheet raises an error

bugfix (1 change)

• resolve cloze moodle import error due to float points

0.6.1 (2025-07-12)

Fixing import error caused by dumping pyside meta package

bugfix (1 change)

• fixing pyside import error

0.6.0 (2025-07-12)

Added variable generator and other architechtural improvements

documentation (1 change)

• Documenting variable generator usage

feature (5 changes)

• Opening spreadsheet file works from within excel2moodle
• Variables are copied to clipboard
• Removed dependence on pyside6-addons
• Var Generator ready
• Merge development of BulletsObj, Parametrization and VarGenerator

improvement (7 changes)

• Adapted Param. Parser to use bullet Obj
• Added bulleList Object
• Parametrics in beta stage
• Refactor parse() method, to construct complete xml-Tree
• Refactored question assembly to only update fields.
• Adapted NFM Question to parametricResult (merge request)
• Implemented ParametricResult Object (merge request)

0.5.2 (2025-06-30)

Extended Documentation and bugfix for import Module

bugfix (2 changes)

• Default question variant saved and reused.
• bugfix: Import module working again

documentation (1 change)

• documentation: Added how to build question database

feature (1 change)

• Implemented MC question string method

improvement (1 change)

• Implemented ClozePart object

0.5.2 (2025-06-30)

Extended Documentation and bugfix for import Module

bugfix (2 changes)

• Default question variant saved and reused.
• bugfix: Import module working again

documentation (1 change)

• documentation: Added how to build question database

feature (1 change)

• Implemented MC question string method

improvement (1 change)

• Implemented ClozePart object

0.5.1 (2025-06-24)

Minor docs improvement and question variant bugfix

bugfix (1 change)

• Bullet points variant didn't get updated

0.5.0 (2025-06-20)

settings handling improved

feature (2 changes)

• Pixmaps and vector graphics scaled to fit in preview
• feature: category Settings implemented

improvement (1 change)

• Tolerance is harmonized by questionData.get()

Settings Errors are logged (1 change)

• Log Errors in settings Sheet