By platform · Socrative quiz

Socrative import quiz Excel template and Socrative quiz maker, filled from a recorded lesson

Socrative imports a whole quiz from its own Excel template, up to 100 questions at a time. VidQuiz drafts the questions, the answer choices, the key and an explanation from your recorded lesson, so the template is filled before the next class instead of over a weekend.

Sample quiz

Saved output. Run your own video free on the home page

What VidQuiz reads: paste a YouTube link and VidQuiz watches the video itself. For any other source (Vimeo, an MP4, a screen recording, an upload) paste that video’s transcript and VidQuiz writes the questions from it.

See how it works

Questions from your video · answers and explanations · edit before you share

Free demo: 3 quizzes, one time, no card needed

The short answer

Socrative imports a quiz from its own Excel template under Library, Add Quiz, Import Quiz. Each row is one question: a Question Type of Multiple choice or Open-ended, the question, up to five answers in Answer A to Answer E, the letter of each correct answer and an optional explanation. One file carries at most 100 questions, and Excel import is listed on every plan including Free, which stores 5 quizzes. VidQuiz drafts those rows from a YouTube lesson or a pasted transcript and exports them as a CSV you paste into the template.

Socrative is the quick check tool a lot of US instructors and trainers already have open: launch a quiz in a room, watch the answers arrive, see who is lost before the session ends. The quiz behind it can be typed one question at a time, or it can be uploaded whole from an Excel file.

The upload itself takes a minute. What takes the evening is the content: twenty questions about the session you actually taught, each with wrong answers good enough to separate the people who followed from the people who guessed. Socrative now ships its own AI for this, and it works from text you paste or a document you upload, with a weekly allowance that depends on your plan. It does not watch your recording.

When the lesson exists as a video, the shorter route is to draft the questions from the video and drop them into the template. This page covers the template as Socrative documents it in its help center (article dated April 24, 2026) and the plan limits printed on its pricing page (read October 2026): the columns, the 100 question ceiling, the rule about several correct answers, and how a question set drafted from a recording moves into the file.

A lecture being recorded on video, the kind of lesson an instructor turns into a Socrative quiz

At a glance

Every way questions get into a Socrative quiz, and what each one needs

Swipe left to see all columns →

Route	What it reads	Plan	The limit that matters
Create a quiz, by hand	Nothing. You type each question, its answers and the key in the editor	Every plan	Time. A Free account holds 5 quizzes at once
Import Quiz, Excel template	Socrative's own .xlsx template, filled and uploaded	Every plan. The pricing page lists Excel import for Free, Essentials, Pro and Organization	100 questions per file. Multiple choice and open-ended rows only, five answers at most
Import Quiz, SOC code	A code another teacher shares from a quiz in their account	Every plan	Only as good as the quiz you borrow. It was not written about your session
Copy-Paste Questions (AI assisted)	Text you copy from a PDF or another app and paste into the prompt field	Counts against AI Question Import, 6 a week on Free, 25 on Essentials, 80 on Pro	Socrative's own note says to check the answers against your answer key
Extract Questions from Document (AI assisted)	An uploaded file that already holds questions, such as a worksheet or test bank	The help article labels it Pro only	Reads questions that already exist. It does not write new ones from a lesson
VidQuiz	A public YouTube link, or the transcript of any other recording	One-time demo of 3 quizzes, then plans from $49 a month	Up to 30 questions per quiz, exported as a CSV you paste into the Socrative template

Import routes and template rules from the Socrative help center article Import a Quiz, dated April 24, 2026. Plan features and weekly AI allowances from socrative.com/pricing. Both read October 2026. The help article and the pricing page describe AI import differently, so both statements are reported as written.

How do I import a quiz into Socrative?

Open Library, choose Add Quiz, then Import Quiz. From there you have two options. If a colleague gave you a SOC code, enter it and the quiz is copied into your Library. If you are bringing your own questions, download the Excel template from the same dialog.

Fill in the quiz name, then one row per question: the question type, the question, the answer choices and the correct answers. Save the sheet and upload it through Import Quiz. If a row is wrong, Socrative names the row so you can fix it and upload again.

Read the quiz once in the editor before you launch it in a room. The import does exactly what the file says, so a key that points at the wrong letter becomes a question the whole class misses, and that is cheaper to catch now than in front of the group.

What is the Socrative Excel template format?

One quiz per file. The quiz name sits in its own field near the top, and the question rows start under a header row with six numbered parts: Question Type, Question, Answer A through Answer E, the correct answer columns and an optional Explanation.

Question Type is a drop-down with two values, Multiple choice and Open-ended. A multiple choice row takes up to five answers. The correct answer columns take letters, and Socrative's own example marks B for a question whose right answer sits in Answer B. You may leave the key blank, mark one letter or mark several.

The template's instruction row asks for alphanumeric characters only. In practice that means a question full of symbols, curly quotes or pasted equations is the first thing to simplify when an upload fails.

How many questions can you import into Socrative?

100 per file. Socrative's help article says only quizzes up to 100 questions can be imported through the template, and recommends splitting a longer quiz into two imports and merging the two quizzes once both are in your Library.

The other ceiling is storage. A Free account holds 5 quizzes at one time, and Essentials, Pro and Organization hold an unlimited number. If you teach several sections on a Free account, keep the full set of files outside Socrative and import the quiz you need that week.

A VidQuiz quiz tops out at 30 questions, so one export always fits in one import with room to spare. Three lessons can go into a single template if you want one long review quiz.

Why is my Socrative quiz import not working?

Start with the row Socrative names in the error, because the import tells you where it stopped. The usual causes are a Question Type that was typed instead of picked from the drop-down, a sixth answer in a column the template does not read, a correct answer written as the answer text instead of its letter, or a file with more than 100 questions.

Pasting is the other common cause. Pasting a whole sheet over the template overwrites the header rows and the drop-down, and Socrative no longer recognizes the file. Paste values only, column by column, into the question rows of a fresh template.

If the upload still fails, try three rows. If three rows import, the problem is one specific question, often a symbol the template's alphanumeric rule does not like. If three rows fail, the problem is the file itself, and a fresh download of the template is the fix.

Can Socrative make a quiz from a YouTube video?

Not from the video itself. Socrative's AI import routes read text you paste and documents you upload, and its pricing page lists Embed videos as a Pro feature, which puts a video in front of students without writing any questions about it.

That is the gap VidQuiz fills. Paste the public YouTube link and it reads the video, then drafts multiple choice questions with the correct one marked, a one line explanation and a timestamp showing the moment each question came from. For a recording that is not on YouTube, paste its transcript instead.

The draft exports as CSV with the options already in separate columns and the key already written as a letter, which is the shape of Socrative's Answer A to Answer E and its correct answer columns.

Does Socrative have an AI quiz generator?

Yes, with a weekly allowance. The pricing page lists AI Question Generation at 15 a week on Free, 50 on Essentials, 150 on Pro and 200 on Organization, and AI Question Import at 6, 25, 80 and 120 a week on the same four plans.

Two things are worth knowing before you plan a term around it. The allowance resets weekly rather than monthly, so a heavy week of quiz writing can run out on a lower plan. And the generator works from a prompt or from text you supply, so it writes about the topic as described, not about what was said in your session.

If your source is a recording, drafting from the recording and importing through the template uses none of the weekly AI allowance, because Excel import is a plain file upload.

How do I turn a recorded lesson into a Socrative quiz?

Paste the lesson's YouTube link into VidQuiz, or paste the transcript if the recording lives in your LMS, on Vimeo or on a shared drive. Review the questions, edit anything you would phrase differently, and export the CSV.

Download a fresh template from Import Quiz and type the quiz name. Set Question Type on the first question row and fill it down. Then copy four blocks across, values only: the Question column into Question, Option A onward into Answer A onward, Correct Option into the first correct answer column, and Explanation into Explanation.

True or false rows carry no letter in our CSV, so put True in Answer A, False in Answer B and type A or B as the key. Change short answer rows to Open-ended and clear their answer cells. Save as .xlsx, upload it through Import Quiz, and launch it in a room.

Spec

The Socrative template, column by column, and what fills each one

Swipe left to see all columns →

Template field	What Socrative expects	Where it comes from in a VidQuiz CSV
1. Quiz Name	The name the quiz gets in your Library, typed once above the question rows	Nothing. Type the lesson title
2. Question Type	A drop-down with two values, Multiple choice or Open-ended	The Type column. Multiple choice and True / False rows become Multiple choice, Short answer rows become Open-ended
3. Question	The question text, one row per question	The Question column, as written
4. Answer A to Answer E	Up to five answer choices for a multiple choice row	Option A to Option E. A VidQuiz question normally has four, so Answer E stays empty. Drop any option past E
5. Correct answer (five columns)	The letter of each correct answer, one letter per column. Optional. Students must select every correct answer to score	The Correct Option letter, pasted into the first of the five columns as it is
6. Explanation (Optional)	A note shown with the answer	The Explanation column, as written
No matching field	The template has no time limit, points or timestamp column	Number, Correct Answer and Timestamp stay behind in the CSV

Field names copied from the template pictured in the Socrative help center article Import a Quiz, whose instruction row also asks for alphanumeric characters only. Download a fresh template from your own account before you fill it, since Socrative can revise the file. The export side reflects our own CSV, which writes Number, Type, Question, Option A onward, Correct Answer, Correct Option, Explanation and Timestamp.

What you get with socrative quiz

Questions drafted from the session itself

Paste the public YouTube link of a lesson, or the transcript of any other recording, and get each question with its options, the correct answer and a one line explanation, tagged with the timestamp it came from so you can check it against the video.

Fits the template without a formula

Socrative marks the key with a letter, and our CSV already writes the key as a letter in Correct Option. Question, Option A onward, Correct Option and Explanation each paste into one template column as they are.

A copy that lives outside Socrative

A Free Socrative account stores 5 quizzes at a time. Keep every set you have drafted as a CSV, a PDF answer key, QTI 1.2, GIFT, a Google Forms file or a Blackboard upload, and import only the one you are running this week.

What you can do

Everything socrative import quiz template gives you

Paste a YouTube link and VidQuiz reads the video itself; for anything else, upload it with its transcript. Either way it writes the questions and you edit anything before you share. You stay in control of the final quiz.

Fill the Socrative Excel template from a recorded lesson
Write plausible wrong answers for every question
Carry the explanation into Socrative with the question
Fix a template Socrative refuses to import
Stay under the 100 question import limit
Reuse the same questions in Canvas, Moodle or Google Forms

Quiz Studio

Try it on a video right here

Pick a sample or paste your own link, generate the quiz, then answer the questions. Each one is tied to a moment in the video, with the answer and a short explanation.

Sample quiz

Saved output. Run your own video free on the home page

Good questions

Questions about socrative quiz

Inside your Socrative teacher account. Open Library, choose Add Quiz, then Import Quiz, and download the Excel template offered in that dialog. Use a fresh copy each time, because Socrative checks the header rows and the Question Type drop-down when you upload.

No. The compare table on Socrative's pricing page lists Import your quizzes from Excel for Free, Essentials, Pro and Organization. What the Free plan limits is storage, at 5 quizzes, and room size, at 50 students per activity.

Yes. The template has five correct answer columns, so you can mark several letters for one question. Socrative's help article adds the catch: students must select all the correct answers to get the question right, so there is no partial credit for picking one of two.

A share code attached to a quiz. If another teacher gives you the SOC code for one of their quizzes, you enter it under Library, Add Quiz, Import Quiz and a copy lands in your Library. It moves an existing quiz between accounts and does not create questions.

A source Socrative does not read. Socrative AI works from a prompt, pasted text or an uploaded document. VidQuiz drafts from the YouTube link or transcript of the session you taught, tags each question with a timestamp, writes an explanation for every answer and keeps the set as files you can reuse in Canvas, Moodle or Google Forms.

Read every question

Explore more

See every use case See pricing Back to home

Turn watch time into learning.