Importing & Exporting Questions

A guide to using the question importer and advice for managing questions banks at scale

When you have hundreds or even thousands of questions you want to put on Synap, you can use the import / export functionality to upload and make changes in bulk via a CSV.

🚨 All existing questions on Synap are given a unique Synap ID. When you are adding questions to an existing quiz via the importer, you must include the existing questions and IDs or they will be deleted overridden on import.

Download the Synap question template

Download the Synap EMQ template

✋ Before you import

Text and images need to be HTML formatted in order to import correctly. When you export questions from platform you'll notice they are HTML formatted, for example, they will have had <p> tags added to paragraphs. You will need to add formatting as HTML to questions in a CSV. This is most important for questions with images and image answer options.

Images

To upload images via the importer, you must have them saved in a repository such as AWS or Wasabi. From there you will need a public link which you will include in the question or option image columns. This will also need HTML formatting

If you are unfamiliar with HTML formatting, particularly when working with images within questions or answer options, it may be easier for you to utilize the importer tool to import the entire text of a question, and then use the available formatting and editing tools on the platform to adjust the formatting and insert the images.

🚨 Images in cells will not be imported into Synap, you must use permalinks and<img> tags

HTML formatting

If you are using Excel you must ensure that you are exporting your csv in the UTF-8 file format. To do this go to File > Save As and select UTF-8 from the drop down box before you download the spreadsheet as a csv

We are aware of users based in the Netherlands being unable to use csv's exported from Excel. We are working towards a resolution for this but in the meantime please use Google Sheets to export your csv's. If this is not an option available to you, please contact your account manager.

Sections and EMQs

If your quiz uses sections remember to create these first so that you can include the section external id on the question importer sheet. Similarly, if you have EMQs in your quiz, import these before the questions so you can include the EMQ ids on the question importer sheet

Updating questions

The importer is not only useful for creating new quizzes but also for making bulk updates to existing quizzes. Follow the export process outlined below and then re-import the edited sheet. This process is useful for making bulk updates to multiple questions, such as adding tags. You can also use spreadsheet formulae such as =(SUBSTITUTE) to help speed up changes.

If you are adding new questions, do not remove the old questions from the sheet. On importing, the quiz will be updated to reflect what is on the sheet, so if you remove old questions and only have new ones on the sheet, the old questions will be deleted.

🧠 Questions with the same ids cannot exist in multiple quizzes. If you want to move questions from one quiz to another, you must delete the Synap IDs

Validation

Imports will be validated before adding questions to platform. You'll be emailed the reasons why an import has failed as well as a reference to the row.

👇 Exporting

Look for the Export to CSV button on Questions and EMQ groups to export you content with all the ids. Content made on platform will be exported as HTML. When your export is complete you'll get an email with the content.