How to backup and restore a course on Moodle (Moodle 3)

Moodle Mastery: How to Backup and Restore Courses for Instant Reuse and Massive Time Savings

Hello Tech Fans and Moodle Mavericks! Welcome back to Darren’s Tech Tutorials.

If you’ve ever spent hours perfecting the perfect syllabus, crafting engaging quizzes, and setting up ideal discussion forums in a Moodle course, you know that effort is precious. Building a quality course takes serious time.

The good news? Moodle offers a powerful, yet often underutilized, feature that acts as a magical duplicating machine for your hard work: Course Backup and Restore.

This process lets you build your course structure once and deploy that structure—with all its activities, resources, and settings—into a new course shell instantly. Think of it as creating a perfect course template! While we originally demonstrated this process on Moodle 3.1, the core steps remain virtually identical across most modern Moodle versions, making this guide timeless.

Let’s dive in and learn how to save countless hours!

Part 1: Backing Up Your Master Moodle Course

Creating a backup file transforms your live course into a portable, compressed .mbz file. This file contains all the content and settings required to clone the course elsewhere.

Goal: Create a clean course template by typically excluding student data, logs, and user history.

Step 1: Access the Backup Settings

Navigate to the specific Moodle course you wish to back up (this is your ‘Source’ course).
In the course menu block (often located on the left or accessed via the gear icon in the top right), click the Gear Icon (Settings).
Select Backup.

Step 2: Configure Backup Settings (The Important Choices)

Moodle will present a detailed list of items to include. Since the goal is usually to create a reusable template, you’ll want to adjust the default settings:

Skip the Essentials: For templates, generally uncheck everything under the “Schema settings” related to user data:
- Include enrolled users
- Include activities and resources (Keep this checked!)
- Include blocks (Keep this checked!)
- Include filters (Keep this checked!)
- Include competencies
- Crucial: Deselect “Include user data” and any options for logs, history, or user files unless you specifically need to archive student work.
Review the Activity List: On the next screen, Moodle allows you to individually select or deselect specific activities or items. Review this list to ensure you are only taking what you need.
Click Next.

Step 3: Name the Backup File

Moodle provides a default file name (e.g., backup-moodle2-course-XXX.mbz). You can rename this file to something more descriptive (e.g., Fall_2023_History101_Template.mbz).
Click Perform backup.

Step 4: Download the File

Moodle will process the backup. Once completed, you will see a confirmation screen. Click Continue and then locate the newly created backup file in the course backup area.

Click Download to save the .mbz file to your local computer. Keep this file safe! It is your reusable template.

Part 2: Restoring the Course Template to a New Shell

Now that you have your course template file, the restoration process is how you instantly deploy that content into a brand-new Moodle course.

Goal: Populate an empty or existing course shell with content from your .mbz template file.

Step 1: Initiate the Restore Process

You have two options for starting the restore:

Option A (Best for New Courses): Navigate to the category where you want the new course to live and click Restore. You will upload the file first. Option B (Best for Populating Existing Courses): Navigate to the empty destination course, click the Gear Icon, and select Restore.

Drag and drop your saved .mbz file into the file upload area, or use the file picker to locate it.
Click Restore.

Step 2: Confirmation and Destination

Moodle will display the details of the course you are restoring. Review these details and click Continue.

The next screen is the most critical part of the restoration process, as it dictates where the content goes:

Restore as a new course: Creates a brand-new course based on the template.
Restore into this course: Merges the backup content into the existing course you are currently viewing. (Use with caution if the destination course already has existing content!)
Delete the contents of this course and then restore: Wipes the current course clean and replaces it entirely with the template content. (This is the most common choice when populating an empty shell.)

Select your destination option and click Continue.

Step 3: Define Course Settings

On the next screen, Moodle asks you to configure the basic settings for the course you are creating (if you chose to restore it as a new course).

Course Category: Verify the category is correct.
Course Name and Short Name: Update these to reflect the new semester or section.
Review all other essential settings (visibility, start/end dates).
Click Next.

Step 4: Final Review and Execution

The final review screen summarizes all the choices you’ve made. Take a moment to ensure that your exclusions (like user data) and inclusions (like activities) are correct.

If everything looks good, click Perform restore.

Moodle will now process the file. This may take a few moments depending on the size of the template. Once complete, you’ll receive a success message. Click Continue and you will be directed to your brand new, fully populated course!

Build Once, Teach Many!

Mastering the Moodle backup and restore function is the fastest way to become an efficiency expert in your teaching platform. Never again waste time manually recreating discussion forums or resource links!

Now that you know the steps, try backing up one of your best courses today and keep that template ready for the next semester.

If this tutorial helped you unlock your Moodle template superpowers, please let me know! Give this post a share, head over to the Darren’s Tech Tutorials YouTube channel and hit that Like button, and make sure you’re Subscribed for more tech mastery guides!

Happy restoring!