100% on-device · nothing uploaded
Quiz text to Moodle GIFT converter
Paste a quiz written in a Word document or a plain text file, mark the correct answers, and get GIFT you can import straight into a Moodle question bank. Every question is shown for checking first, so a mis-read answer key never reaches your course.
How to use it
- Paste your questions. Mark each correct answer with an asterisk — or write “Answer: b” under the question, or list a key such as “1-b, 2-c” at the end of the file.
- Check the parsed list. Click any option to mark or unmark it as correct, and change a question’s type if it was guessed wrong.
- Set a category if you want the questions filed into one, then copy the GIFT or download the .txt.
- In Moodle: Question bank → Import → choose GIFT format → upload the file.
What GIFT does and does not carry
GIFT is Moodle’s plain-text import format, and it is the shortest path from a quiz someone typed in Word to a working question bank. One file can hold multiple choice, multiple-answer, true/false, short answer, numerical, matching and essay questions at once, each separated by a blank line. A question is written as its text followed by braces holding the answers, where an equals sign marks a correct answer and a tilde marks a distractor; a leading “::name::” gives the question the title that will show in the bank list.
What it does not carry is anything visual. Images, equations written in an editor, drag-and-drop questions and per-answer media have no plain-text spelling, so they are added inside Moodle after the import rather than in the file. The same applies to formatting you can see in Word: when you copy a document as plain text, the underline or red colour marking the right answer is discarded along with everything else. That is why this converter reads asterisks, “Answer:” lines and end-of-file keys instead — they are the marks that survive a copy and paste.
The two things that actually break a GIFT import
The first is unescaped special characters. GIFT reserves the tilde, equals sign, hash, colon and curly braces as syntax, so a chemistry question containing braces, a maths question containing an equals sign, or a URL containing a hash will end the question early and produce either a nonsense import or an outright error. Each has to be preceded by a backslash to be read as text. This tool escapes them for you, which is the single most common reason a hand-written GIFT file fails.
The second is a blank line inside a question. A blank line is what separates one question from the next, so a question whose text runs across a paragraph break silently becomes two broken questions. Line breaks inside a question have to be written as an escape sequence instead, which is what happens here automatically. A third, quieter problem affects multiple-answer questions: the credit split across correct options has to match the percentages Moodle recognises, so an even split across three answers is written as 33.33333% rather than 33.3%, and wrong ticks are given a matching negative weight so guessing everything scores nothing.
Questions
Is my quiz uploaded anywhere?
No. The parsing and the GIFT output both happen in your browser — the text never leaves this tab, which matters when the file is an exam that has not been sat yet.
How do I mark the correct answer?
Any of these: an asterisk or plus at the end of the option, an asterisk before it, [x], a bold option, an “Answer: b” line under the question, or an answer key such as “1-b, 2-c, 3-a” at the end of the file. You can also just click the right option in the list before exporting.
Can I import a Word file directly?
Not as a file, but copying the text out of Word and pasting it here works. Underlining and colour are lost in a plain-text copy, so mark the correct answers with an asterisk before you paste, or fix them in the review list.
Does it support questions with several correct answers?
Yes. Mark every correct option and the question is exported as a multiple-answer question, with the credit split evenly and wrong ticks penalised so ticking everything scores zero.
Where do I import the file in Moodle?
In your course, open the Question bank, choose Import, select GIFT format, and upload the .txt file. The questions land in the category you name in the file, or in the default one if you leave it blank.
Will accented or Cyrillic text survive?
Yes. The downloaded file is UTF-8, which is what Moodle expects, so Ukrainian, Polish, Greek or any other script imports unchanged.
Updated 2026-07-20. Runs fully in your browser — nothing is uploaded.