Uploading users

An administrator can bulk upload users in Moodle using a spreadsheet. This can be created in Excel, Open Office, or a similar application like Google Docs. In this section, we will refer to using Microsoft Excel.

Tip

The minimum information that is required as data in the spreadsheet includes the first name, last name, e-mail, username, and password. The password is not mandatory, and if you leave it blank, it will autogenerate the password and send an e-mail to the user immediately with their username and password.

Preparing the spreadsheet

To prepare your file for uploading perform the following:

1. Open Microsoft Excel.
2. Create five column names in the first row as the following—these should be lowercase and no spaces:
   • username
   • password
   • firstname
   • lastname
   • email
3. Fill in the user details:

   

4. For the username, we suggest you use the first name and last name with no spaces, no special characters, and all lowercase or e-mail address in lowercase.
5. If you are creating manual accounts, you can set a password if you prefer, otherwise if you leave it blank, Moodle will send the user their username and password via e-mail after the upload.
6. Enter their first name and their last name—be sure to avoid special characters in the fields like quotes or commas.
7. Enter their e-mail address.
8. Repeat this process for all the users that you want to create.
9. Under the File menu, select Save As. Then, select CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv) for Save as type:

   

10. Click on Save. Excel will give you a warning about the format.
11. Click on Yes to continue to save the CSV file.

Uploading the spreadsheet

The following are the steps for uploading the spreadsheet:

1. Log in as an administrator user account.
2. Access the user management options in the Administration block by navigating to Site administration | Users | Accounts.
3. Click on Upload users:

   

4. Click on Choose a file to bring up the file picker.
5. Click on Upload a file and then click on Browse.
6. Find the file on your computer, and then click on Open to select it.
7. Click on Upload this file.
8. Change the Preview rows setting to a larger suitable number if you are uploading a lot of users. This will enable you to preview that their details have been interpreted correctly.
9. Click on Upload users. This will bring up the preview page before actually creating the accounts.
10. Check the Upload users preview details of the users are correct:

    

11. Under Settings | Upload Type.
12. If you are creating new users, select Add new only, skip existing users.
13. Select Update existing users only if you are updating existing users. Note that if you have set passwords in the spreadsheet, you will overwrite their password if they changed it. This does not matter for users with external authentication, as it is not used.
14. Select Add new and update existing users if you are creating new users and updating existing ones.
15. Under default values, click on Show more... to see all the options:

    

    

16. For the New user password field, one option is to leave it as Create password if needed. Then Moodle will generate a password if none is supplied in the CSV file. The other option is to set it to Field required in file. Hence, Moodle will require the password column to be present and not empty for each user.
17. Select the preference for the Email digest type setting:
    • No digest (single email per forum post)
    • Complete (daily email with full posts) (that is all content)
    • Subjects (daily email with subjects only) (recommended)
18. Select the preference for the Forum auto-subscribe setting:
    • Yes: when I post, subscribe me to that forum discussion (recommended)
    • No: don't automatically subscribe me to forums discussions
19. Enter the text for the users' location in the City/town field. Users can change this later.
20. Select the correct country under Select a country. They can change this later.
21. Select the timezone for the Timezone setting if you know the users' timezone.
22. Select the language in the Preferred language menu if needed.
23. Click on the Upload users button to save all changes.