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Uploading Bulk Users – Moodle 1.9

It is not usually necessary to import students in bulk to Moodle as students are added via a synchronization process. If admins need to add multiple users to their Moodle instance, such as audit students or guest users, they can do so using a plain text file in the following formats. Only Administrators can bulk upload users to Moodle.

What is a plain text file?

Simply put, a plain text file is a file that only holds text and holds very little formatting, (e.g., no bolding, italics, etc.). An example of a built-in text editor on a PC is Notepad. Mac’s come with a built-in text editor called TextEdit, but it is not an absolute plain text editor. In order to use TextEdit as a plain text editor you must change the application preferences and make “Plain Text” the default. A delimiter or character is used to indicate and separate the boundaries between individual fields in your record. The most common characters used as delimiters are commas (,), tabs, and colons (:). The first line in the upload file is special, and contains the field names defining the format for the rest of the file. The properly formatted 3 line Notepad example below will insert the username, the password, the first name, the last name, and the user’s email address into Moodle.

Example of Notepad Upload File using the comma as a delimiter to separate fields in user records

Please note that the comma is not present after the email address

A comma separated values or CSV file also stores tabular data in plain text form. A CSV file can be created using Excel and then saving the file as a CSV file. CSV files can hold any number of new records separated by a delimiter.

1. To create a CSV file in Excel, first enter the field names into cell A1 to E1, and then the first record of information into cells A2 to E2. The second record will be entered into cells A3 to E3 and so on.

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2. Click FileSave as.

3. In the Save as window, enter the file name in the File name: field.

4. Select CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv) in the Save as type: field.

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5. Click Save.

6. Click Yes if you receive the following message:

Points to remember:

• Each line contains fields separated by commas (or other delimiters) without quotes (") or trailing delimiters

• The first line is special, and contains field names defining the format for the rest of the file.

• Required fields (in any order)

o username (no space) o password o firstname (no space) o lastname (no space) o email

• Validity checks are performed in Moodle to ensure that the:

o Username contains only lowercase letters, numbers, underscores (_),

hyphens (-), periods (.), and at-symbols (@). o Password meets the requirements for the site's password policy. To force a

password change, set the password field to changeme. o The email address is in the form: name@example.com.

Once you have all users entered into your plain text or CSV file, meeting the above criteria, you will be able to upload the users into Moodle.

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Uploading Users

To upload the users to Moodle:

1. Log into Moodle. Note: You must have administrative privileges to upload bulk users 2. In the Site Administration Block, select

UsersAccountsUpload Users.

3. In the Upload Users window, click the Browse button to browse to your file.

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4. Once you have browsed and selected your file, click Open.

Your file is now ready to be uploaded.

5. The CSV delimiter is a

comma by default (do not change).

6. The Encoding is UTF-

8, by default (do not change).

7. Preview rows - the

number of rows that will be returned per page in your upload results.

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8. Click Upload users.

9. The Upload users preview window displays the users to be uploaded and the field names. This is just a preview window. The users have not yet been uploaded.

10. Settings:

a. Upload type – when adding only new users, leave set at “Add new only, skip existing users”

b. New user password – leave at “Field required in file”

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c. Existing user details – Not applicable when adding new users d. Existing user password – Not applicable when adding new users e. Allow renames – Not applicable when adding new users f. Allow deletes – Not applicable when adding new users g. Prevent email address duplicates – Should not be applicable when adding new

users. Select “Yes” if you would like to assure that no duplicate email address are accepted.

h. Select for bulk operations – leave at No

Default values – display all default values by clicking the button.

i. Email display – You can choose to allow course members to view the email address or hide the email address from course members here.

j. Email activated – You can choose to deactivate the email address here. To prevent users from receiving a large number of emails from courses and forum digest change the setting to “This email address is disabled”.

k. Forum auto-subscribe – Leave at No, don’t automatically subscribe me to forums. l. City/town – Type in your city or town. m. ID number – Leave blank. n. Institution – Leave blank. o. Department – Leave blank.

11.Click the Upload users button.

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12.Your uploaded users are displayed. The window shows:

a. How many users were uploaded into Moodle. b. Any user’s having weak password – password that don’t adhere to the site policy.

(the password set to changeme will force a password reset when first logging in) c. Any errors – duplicates, improper diacriticals in the username, etc.

13. Click Continue.

You’ll be directed back to the “Upload users” page.

14.Click UsersAccountsBrowse a list of users to search for the recently uploaded users.

15.The users can now be added to courses in Moodle.