iSpring QuizMaker Excel Template: Import Format

iSpring QuizMaker imports questions from a spreadsheet, and the import either works on the first try or fails on almost every row. The difference is formatting. iSpring reads .xls and .xlsx files only, expects the questions on the first worksheet with field names in row 1, recognises 16 question type codes, and identifies the correct answer by a single asterisk placed in front of it. Get those four things right and a few hundred questions land in one pass.

What follows is the field layout iSpring documents for QuizMaker, set out column by column, with the rules that most often send a row into the error list instead of into the quiz.

The columns iSpring QuizMaker expects in row 1

Row 1 holds the field names. Every row after it is one question with its answer choices. The columns iSpring looks for are these.

Column	What goes in it	Required
Question type	One of the 16 type codes, for example MC or TF	Yes
Question text	The question as the learner reads it	Yes
Image	Path to an image shown with the question	No
Video	Path to a video shown with the question	No
Audio	Path to an audio clip shown with the question	No
Answer 1 to Answer 10	The answer choices, up to ten of them	Yes for choice types
Correct Feedback	Message shown after a right answer	No
Incorrect Feedback	Message shown after a wrong answer	No
Points	Score for the question	No

Ten answer columns is a hard ceiling, not a suggestion. If you are converting a question bank that carries more than ten distinct choices anywhere in it, trim those questions before the import rather than after, because a truncated answer set is much harder to spot once the questions are already inside QuizMaker.

The 16 question type codes

The Question type column takes a short code, not the readable name. iSpring pairs most graded types with a survey equivalent that collects an answer without scoring it, which is why the list is longer than the question types you see in the QuizMaker interface.

Code	Question type	Graded or survey
MC	Multiple choice, one correct answer	Graded
MR	Multiple response, several correct answers	Graded
TF	True or false	Graded
TI	Type in, matched against accepted text	Graded
MG	Matching	Graded
SEQ	Sequence	Graded
NUMG	Numeric	Graded
PO	Pick one	Survey
PM	Pick many	Survey
YN	Yes or no	Survey
SA	Short answer	Survey
MS	Matching	Survey
RNK	Ranking	Survey
NUMS	Numeric	Survey
ESS	Essay	Survey
IS	Info slide, content with no question	Neither

Two of these codes are worth reading twice. IS is an info slide, which lets you drop explanation or context between questions straight from the spreadsheet, so a quiz that teaches as it tests can be built entirely in Excel. And the graded and survey pairs look interchangeable but are not: put PO where you meant MC and the question will import perfectly, then quietly score nothing.

How to mark the correct answer

The correct answer is preceded with an asterisk. There is no separate correct answer column, no letter reference and no index number. You write the answer text in its Answer column and put an asterisk immediately before it.

Question type	Question text	Answer 1	Answer 2	Answer 3	Points
MC	Which extinguisher class is used on electrical fires?	Class A	*Class C	Class K	10

Multiple response questions take an asterisk on each correct choice. The exception is the type in question, where you list only the answers you are willing to accept and mark none of them, because everything in those cells is correct by definition. That exception catches people out: an asterisk left on a type in answer becomes part of the string the learner has to match.

Points, feedback and blank cells

The Points column accepts any value from 0.1 up to 99999, and fractional points are allowed to one decimal place. Leave the cell empty and iSpring applies the default from Quiz Properties instead, which is the sensible choice when every question is worth the same amount. Correct Feedback and Incorrect Feedback behave the same way: fill them per question, or leave them blank and let the quiz-level message stand.

Because feedback is a per-row column, a spreadsheet is the fastest way to write explanations at scale. Typing a hundred individual feedback messages inside the authoring tool is slow work. Pasting a hundred of them down a column is not.

File rules that break the import

Most failed imports come down to one of five things, and none of them produce a helpful error until you already know what to look for.

• Wrong file type. Only .xls and .xlsx are supported. A .csv will not import, which surprises people who exported one from another tool.
• Questions on the wrong sheet. They have to be on the first worksheet. A cover sheet or an instructions tab in position one is enough to break it.
• No Excel installed. Microsoft Excel has to be present on the machine for the import to run at all.
• Renamed headers. Row 1 has to carry the field names iSpring is looking for, spelled as documented.
• A bad type code. An unrecognised code sends the row to the error list rather than stopping the import.

That last behaviour is genuinely useful. Rows that are formatted incorrectly are simply not imported, and they are listed with error descriptions in the Import Result window. So a 300 row file with 12 bad rows gives you 288 questions and a punch list, rather than one failure message and nothing to show for it. Import first, then fix what it tells you.

iSpring, Storyline 360 and Moodle compared on spreadsheet import

If you are moving a question bank between authoring tools, the differences below are the ones that cost time. All three behave differently enough that a file built for one will not load into another without editing.

Rule	iSpring QuizMaker	Storyline 360	Moodle
File types	.xls, .xlsx	.xls, .xlsx, .txt (not .csv)	No spreadsheet importer in core
Type codes	16	19	Not applicable
Correct answer	Leading asterisk	Leading asterisk	Equals sign in GIFT
Feedback	Two columns	Separated by a pipe character	Hash character in GIFT
Answer ceiling	10	10	No fixed ceiling
Sheet read	First worksheet	First worksheet	Not applicable

Moodle is the outlier and it trips up a lot of people mid-migration. Moodle core ships importers for its own XML, GIFT, Aiken, Cloze, missing word and Blackboard formats, and none of them read Excel or CSV. Getting a spreadsheet into Moodle means converting it to GIFT first, which our guide to converting a spreadsheet into GIFT works through with the escaping rule that breaks it.

Getting questions out of a video and into the iSpring template

The spreadsheet importer solves the typing problem only after somebody has written the questions. When the source material is a recorded training session, a webinar or a product walkthrough, that writing is the expensive part.

That is the step turning a training video into a quiz is for. Paste a YouTube link and VidQuiz reads the video, drafting multiple-choice questions with answers, explanations and a timestamp on each one so you can check any question against the moment it came from. For a Vimeo link, an MP4, a webinar recording or a screen capture, paste that video's transcript alongside it, because VidQuiz has no speech-to-text of its own.

Be aware of the format gap, because it is real. VidQuiz exports a generic CSV with Number, Type, Question, Option A to D, Correct Answer, Explanation and Timestamp columns. That is not the layout iSpring reads, and .csv is not a file type iSpring accepts. Moving one into the other is a manual pass in Excel: rename the headers to iSpring's field names, move Option A to D into Answer 1 to Answer 4, put an asterisk in front of the correct choice, drop the Explanation text into Correct Feedback, and save as .xlsx. For a 20 question quiz that is a few minutes of find and replace, not an afternoon of typing.

If your course itself has not been built yet and the source is a report or a policy document rather than a recording, it is usually faster to turn the source document into slides before you start authoring, since iSpring Suite does its course building inside PowerPoint anyway.

Which route is worth it

Spreadsheet import earns its keep on volume and on repetition. A one-off quiz of eight questions is quicker to type into the authoring tool directly. A compliance bank of 200 questions that gets revised every year is a spreadsheet job, because the spreadsheet is the version you edit and the quiz is the artifact you regenerate.

Before you commit to the workflow, it is worth knowing what the license costs and what it does not cover. Our breakdown of iSpring QuizMaker pricing sets out the per user figure, why the iSpring Suite tiers show up in different currencies on different sites, and where a browser-based tool fits instead. If you are moving questions between platforms more generally, the quiz format converter covers which export lands cleanly in which system, from QTI 1.2 to Moodle GIFT to Blackboard's tab-delimited upload.