# QTI converter for Canvas: text, CSV or Word to QTI | Evalmee > Turn questions from text, Excel or Word into a QTI 2.1 package for Canvas, Blackboard or Brightspace, and open any QTI file to read it. Nothing uploaded. Source: https://evalmee.com/en/tools/qti-converter/ FR: https://evalmee.com/fr/outils/convertisseur-qti-canvas/ ES: https://evalmee.com/es/herramientas/convertidor-qti/ ES-ES: https://evalmee.com/es-es/herramientas/convertidor-qti/ IT: https://evalmee.com/it/strumenti/convertitore-qti/ --- ## QTI converter for Canvas A QTI package ready to import into Canvas, Blackboard or Brightspace, and a viewer to read any QTI file. ## QTI converter From a document to a Canvas quiz — and back: drop a QTI package here and read the questions it holds. Everything is converted in your browser; no question and no file is ever sent to a server. Or import into Evalmee directly — it reads the same file. ## How to convert questions to QTI ### Give it your questions as they are Paste the text of your quiz, drop the Word document you wrote it in, or drop the CSV your spreadsheet exported. The converter recognises questions that are numbered or separated by a blank line, choices marked A) A. a) - or •, and the correct answer marked with a star, with an ANSWER: line, with bold text in a Word document, or in the last column of a table. ### Check what it understood Every question it found appears on a card: the stem can be edited, the correct answer is a click away, and a counter tells you how many questions are ready and how many still need fixing. A question type that QTI cannot carry is listed with its number rather than half-translated. ### Download the package and import it Choose whether the package should hold a quiz or a bank of questions, download the .zip, then import it into Canvas, Blackboard or Brightspace. The zip is built in your browser: nothing is uploaded, and the file is yours whether or not you ever open an Evalmee account. ## What is a QTI file? QTI stands for Question and Test Interoperability. It is the [QTI](https://evalmee.com/en/assessment-glossary/#qti-question-and-test-interoperability) standard published by 1EdTech, formerly IMS Global, described on 1edtech.org/standards/qti as a way of packaging and moving tests and questions from one application to another. It writes the stem, the choices, the correct answer and the scoring rules in XML, so that a quiz authored in one platform can be imported into another as real, editable questions. A "QTI file" is almost never a single file. It is a .zip — sometimes named .imscc — holding an imsmanifest.xml that indexes the package, and one XML document per question or per test. Renaming it to .zip and opening it shows exactly that. That is also why double-clicking one does nothing useful: there is no QTI reader on an ordinary computer, which is what the viewer further down this page is for. Three versions matter, and they are not the same format. QTI 1.2 dates from 2003 and is what Canvas still exports. QTI 2.1 was finalised in August 2012 and is the version nearly every current importer reads — 1EdTech has deprecated it since the end of 2024, which changes nothing about what the platforms accept. QTI 3.0 arrived in May 2022 and appears in no LMS import path among the platforms below, so this converter writes 2.1. Moodle is the exception in the table: its core reads no QTI at all, in either direction. Questions bound for Moodle go through Aiken, GIFT or Moodle XML instead, which is the job of the [Moodle question converter](https://evalmee.com/en/tools/moodle-question-converter/) next door. | Platform | Imports | Exports | | --- | --- | --- | | Canvas — Classic Quizzes | QTI 1.2 and 2.1 | QTI 1.2, in Canvas's own dialect | | Canvas — New Quizzes | QTI 1.2 and 2.x | A QTI package; the version is not documented | | Blackboard — Original and Ultra | QTI 2.1, into question banks | QTI 2.1 | | Brightspace (D2L) | A QTI package; the version is not documented | A D2L package | | Moodle | No QTI: use Aiken, GIFT or Moodle XML | No QTI | | TAO | QTI 2.1; certified by 1EdTech on QTI 2.2 | The same | | Inspera | QTI 2.1 and 2.2, once support is switched on for your account | QTI 2.2, falling back to 2.1 | ## Import a QTI package into Canvas For a Classic quiz: in your course, open Settings, then Import Course Content in the right-hand column. Choose QTI .zip file as the content type, pick the file you downloaded here, choose the question bank the questions should land in, and start the import. The job's progress appears under Current Jobs, and processing can take a few minutes after the upload itself is done. Instructure's own documentation states that Canvas supports QTI versions 1.2 and 2.1. For New Quizzes the door is a different one: create the quiz first, then use the Import button on its Build page. To fill an item bank instead, open Item Banks in the course navigation and import from the Manage Item Banks page — the Item Banks button on its own offers no import. New Quizzes accepts QTI 1.2 and 2.x, and an import can only create a quiz, never update one that already exists. Which of the two options in the tool above you should have picked depends on that choice. Canvas reads the manifest twice: once for the resources that declare a question, once for the resource that declares a test. A package with both arrives as a ready-made quiz. A package with items only arrives as a bank of questions, and the quiz is assembled afterwards — which is how New Quizzes expects to be fed. Two habits save an afternoon. Import into a test course the first time, because Canvas fails silently on a package it cannot read: no error, no quiz, and half a bank left behind. And keep the source document — it is the document that gets reconverted when something is wrong, never the package. ### Classic quiz or New Quizzes? Choose the quiz option when you want the whole thing to arrive as one ready-made quiz, in the order you wrote it. The package then holds an assessment container listing every question, which Canvas Classic Quizzes turns into a quiz in the course. Choose the question bank option when the questions are meant to be reused, drawn at random, or assembled into several quizzes — and when you are on New Quizzes. The package then holds the questions and nothing else. It is also the shape Blackboard and Brightspace expect when importing a pool, with one caveat worth knowing: Blackboard turns true/false questions into multiple-choice ones on the way in, because it does not treat true/false as a type of its own. ## Open and read a QTI file Drop a .zip or an .imscc into the tool's zone above and the questions appear: the stem, the choices, and which of them is the right answer. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is imported anywhere — it is a reader, for the moment when a publisher or a colleague sends you a package and you want to know what is in it before committing a course to it. It reads QTI 1.2 as well as QTI 2.1, which matters because a Canvas export is QTI 1.2 and a Blackboard export is QTI 2.1. Single choice, multiple answers, true/false, short answers and numerical questions come through. Essays, matching and drag-and-drop questions are listed by number as not converted, rather than silently turned into something they are not. Once a package is open, it can leave as plain text, GIFT, Aiken or CSV — which is the shortest route from a Canvas quiz to a Moodle one, and the only way to get a spreadsheet out of a package a publisher sent you. ### The errors a package can carry A package with no imsmanifest.xml is not a package: it is a folder of XML someone zipped. The viewer says so and reads the XML anyway, because that is usually still what you wanted. Two resources declaring the same identifier make an importer keep one and drop the other, silently. The viewer names the duplicate. An item with no correctResponse is a question with no answer key. It imports, and every attempt scores zero. The viewer flags it with its number so it can be fixed before the import rather than after the exam. ## Text to QTI: the format we accept There is no need to learn a syntax: numbered questions with lettered choices and a star on the right answer are read as they are. The format below is the one text2qti uses, so a file written for that command-line tool is accepted here unchanged — including its Title: and Points: lines, which are read as metadata and not as part of the question. The difference is what comes out: text2qti writes QTI 1.2, this page writes QTI 2.1, and this page needs nothing installed. A blank line separates two questions. A question with no choices and an ANSWER: line is a short answer; if what it accepts is a number, it becomes a numerical question. Two choices reading True and False make a true/false question. ``` Quiz title: Sample quiz Quiz description: An example quiz. 1. What is 2+3? a) 6 b) 1 *c) 5 d) 4 Title: Alphabet Points: 2 2. What is the fourth letter of the alphabet? a) A b) B c) C *d) D 3. The Earth orbits the Sun. a) True b) False ANSWER: A 4. Who wrote Candide? ANSWER: Voltaire ``` ## Which package for which platform The rule fits in four lines. QTI 2.1 is the version to write in every case; what changes from one platform to the next is whether the package should declare a test or only its questions. ``` Canvas, one ready-made quiz → QTI 2.1, items + assessment container Canvas New Quizzes, a bank → QTI 2.1, items only Blackboard, Brightspace, TAO → QTI 2.1, items only Moodle → not QTI: use Aiken, GIFT or Moodle XML ``` ## Frequently asked questions ### What is a QTI file? A QTI file is a .zip holding an imsmanifest.xml and one XML document per question, written to the Question and Test Interoperability standard published by 1EdTech at 1edtech.org/standards/qti. It exists so that a quiz written in one platform can be imported into another as real, editable questions. Nothing on an ordinary computer opens one, which is why a viewer is needed to read it. ### How do I import a quiz into Canvas? For a Classic quiz, open Settings in your course, then Import Course Content, choose QTI .zip file as the content type, select the package, pick the question bank it should land in, and start the import. For New Quizzes, create the quiz first and use the Import button on its Build page. Import into a test course the first time: Canvas fails silently on a package it cannot read. ### How do I convert a Word quiz to Canvas? Drop the .docx file into the tool's zone at the top of this page. The document is read in your browser: paragraphs become stems and choices, and answers written in bold are recognised as the correct ones. Check the cards it shows, fix what needs fixing, then download the QTI package and import it into your Canvas course. ### Which QTI version does Canvas use? Instructure's documentation states that Canvas supports QTI versions 1.2 and 2.1 on import, and New Quizzes accepts QTI 1.2 and 2.x. On the way out, a Classic quiz is exported as QTI 1.2 in a dialect of its own. This converter writes 2.1, because the same package then also imports into Blackboard, TAO and Inspera. ### How do I open a QTI zip file? Use the tool at the top of this page: drop the .zip or .imscc and the questions are rendered — stem, choices and correct answer — without importing anything anywhere. Opening the zip by hand works too, but what is inside is XML written for a machine, and a package of sixty questions is sixty files. ### Is QTI the same as SCORM? No. QTI, a 1EdTech standard, describes the questions themselves — types, correct answers, scoring rules — so an LMS can import them as native, editable questions. SCORM packages a self-contained course that the LMS launches in a frame and merely collects a score from, without ever seeing the individual questions. A SCORM package cannot become a question bank, and QTI cannot carry a course. ### Are my files uploaded? No. Reading, converting, zipping and downloading all happen inside your browser; the file never leaves your computer and nothing is stored. That is also why the tool keeps working on a school network that blocks outside services, and why a package under embargo can be opened here safely. ## Other tools ## What if there were no package to build at all? Evalmee imports your questions from Word, Excel, plain text or a QTI package, runs the exam and grades it — with no conversion step.