By platform · Thinkific quiz

Thinkific quiz template, Thinkific AI quiz generator and quiz import from a video lesson

Thinkific imports quiz questions from one .xlsx template with ten answer columns and an asterisk on the right answer. Its AI Quiz Generator needs captions and stops at the first 8,000 to 10,000 words of a chapter. The questions still have to come from somewhere.

Sample quiz

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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

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The short answer

Thinkific imports quiz questions from an .xlsx file built on its own template: a sheet named QUESTIONS with the columns QuestionType, QuestionText, Explanation and Choice1 to Choice10, where SA means one correct answer, MA means one or more, and an asterisk at the start of a choice marks it correct. The New Course Builder takes 50 rows per file and the Classic Course Builder 500. VidQuiz writes the rows that file needs from a lesson: paste a public YouTube link or a transcript and export a CSV with the question, up to ten options, the correct answer and an explanation for every item.

Thinkific is one of the few course platforms that ships a real question import. There is a downloadable spreadsheet template, it is documented on a single support page, and it works in both the Classic Course Builder and the New Course Builder that sites created since January 28, 2026 can use. Once your questions exist as rows, getting them into a quiz takes a minute.

The catch is the word once. The template is a container. It has a column for the question, a column for the explanation and ten columns for answer choices, and every one of those cells has to be written by somebody. For a course built on recorded video, that somebody is usually the creator, scrubbing through a lesson and typing.

Thinkific has an answer for that too, the AI Quiz Generator on paid plans. It reads the text, PDF and captioned video lessons in the same chapter and drafts multiple choice questions. It is useful, it costs nothing extra on Basic and above, and it has limits the help center spells out: captions are required, videos embedded in a text lesson are skipped, and it only reads the first 8,000 to 10,000 words of the chapter.

This page covers both routes as Thinkific documents them in September 2026: the exact template format, the row caps, what the AI generator can and cannot read, and where a question set drafted from the recording itself fits in.

At a glance

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

Swipe left to see all columns →

Route	What it reads	Plan and cost	The limit that matters
Quiz builder, by hand	Nothing. You type each question, choice and explanation	$0 extra	Time. A 40 question final is an evening of typing
Import Questions, .xlsx template	A sheet named QUESTIONS with QuestionType, QuestionText, Explanation and Choice1 to Choice10	$0 extra, no plan requirement named in the import docs	50 rows per file in the New Course Builder, 500 in the Classic, 1MB per file
AI Quiz Generator, from lessons	Text, PDF and captioned video lessons in the same chapter as the quiz	Basic and above, from $40 a month billed annually	Only the first 8,000 to 10,000 words of the chapter. Embedded videos are ignored
AI Quiz Generator, pasted text	Text you paste into the New Course Builder	Basic and above	Multiple choice and select all that apply only
VidQuiz	A public YouTube link, or the transcript of any other recording	Free demo of 3 quizzes, then plans from $49 a month	Up to 30 questions per quiz, exported as a CSV you move into the template

Template layout, row caps and file size from the Thinkific help center article on importing quiz questions and the template file it links, both read in September 2026. AI Quiz Generator scope from the Thinkific article on adding a quiz to a lesson. Plan prices from the Thinkific 2026 plan pricing update, which raised Basic to $54 a month or $475 a year from August 13, 2026.

How do I import a quiz into Thinkific?

Download the quiz template from the Thinkific help center, fill the QUESTIONS sheet, save it as .xlsx and upload it from the quiz. In the New Course Builder, open the lesson, choose Quiz from the content menu, click Build quiz, then Import Questions and Upload file. In the Classic Course Builder the quiz has to be saved as a draft first, because the Import Questions tab only appears after that.

Imported questions land at the end of the quiz, after anything already there, so you can build a quiz in batches. Thinkific notes that bigger files take longer to process. A file that fails usually fails for one of three reasons: the workbook was saved as CSV instead of .xlsx, the sheet was renamed, or a column was moved.

Everything after the upload is ordinary quiz setup. You can make the quiz a prerequisite, require a passing grade or turn on the randomized question bank so each learner draws a different subset.

What is the Thinkific quiz import template format?

One header row and one row per question, in a sheet named QUESTIONS. The columns are QuestionType, QuestionText, Explanation and Choice1 through Choice10. QuestionType takes SA for a single correct answer or MA for one or more correct answers. You mark correct choices by starting them with an asterisk, so a true or false question is an SA row with the choices *True and False.

Three rules trip people up. Only the first worksheet is imported, so notes on a second tab are safe but questions there are not. Renaming the tabs breaks the import. And spreadsheet formatting does not survive, so a question that relies on bold or an inline link needs its emphasis added back in the builder.

There is no column for points, feedback on wrong answers or images. Pictures, audio and video can be added to a question, a choice or an explanation afterwards through the text editor.

Does Thinkific have an AI quiz generator?

Yes. The AI Quiz Generator is included on every paid plan, Basic and above, and drafts multiple choice questions from the text, PDF and video lessons in the same chapter as the quiz. In the New Course Builder you can also paste text and generate from that. Correct answers come back labeled, you pick how many questions you want, and a refine box lets you ask for changes across the whole set.

Its documented limits decide whether it fits your course. It reads only lessons in the quiz chapter. Video lessons count only if closed captions are enabled, and Thinkific says video support is still rolling out, so some creators do not have it yet. Videos, images and external content embedded inside a text lesson are not used. And it works from the first 8,000 to 10,000 words found in the chapter.

If your lessons are captioned videos uploaded to Thinkific and a chapter is short, the built-in generator is the cheapest route and you should use it. It is already in the plan you pay for.

Can Thinkific generate a quiz from a video?

Only a video lesson with closed captions in the same chapter as the quiz, and only once video support has reached your account. Thinkific can write those captions for you: its Closed Captions Autogenerator produces an SRT file in the speaker language when you upload a video. The quiz generator then reads the captions rather than the picture.

Two common setups fall outside that. A course that embeds YouTube videos inside text lessons gets nothing from the generator, because embedded video is ignored. And a long lecture runs into the word ceiling: at a typical 130 to 150 spoken words a minute, one hour of teaching is roughly 8,000 to 9,000 words, so a chapter with a single long recording can already fill the limit before the generator sees the end of it.

That is the gap VidQuiz fills. It drafts from the lesson link or transcript you give it, one recording at a time, with every question tagged to the moment it came from so you can check it against the video.

How many questions can you import into a Thinkific quiz?

Fifty rows per file in the New Course Builder and 500 in the Classic Course Builder, with a 1MB file size limit either way. Because imported questions append to the end of the quiz, a question bank bigger than 50 in the new builder is simply several uploads.

The cap matters most for randomized question banks. A bank is only worth turning on when it holds several times the number of questions each learner sees, since that is what makes each attempt different. A 15 question quiz drawn from a bank of 60 is two files in the New Course Builder.

A VidQuiz quiz tops out at 30 questions, so any single quiz you generate fits in one New Course Builder file with room to spare.

Can I export quiz questions from Thinkific?

No. Thinkific states in its help center that it has no direct way to export quiz questions, answers and explanations created in the course builder, and suggests copying them into Word or Excel by hand and keeping local backups.

That makes the source file worth keeping. If your questions start life in a spreadsheet, the spreadsheet is your backup. If they start life inside the builder, whether typed or AI generated, the only way out later is copy and paste.

Every VidQuiz question set stays in your account and exports whenever you need it: CSV for the Thinkific template, a PDF with the answer key, QTI 1.2 for Canvas or Brightspace, GIFT for Moodle, a Google Forms file or a Blackboard upload.

How do I turn a video lesson into a Thinkific quiz?

Paste the public YouTube link of the lesson into VidQuiz, or paste its transcript if the recording lives in Thinkific, Vimeo or anywhere else. The SRT file from Thinkific captions works as that transcript. Review the questions, edit anything you would phrase differently, and export the CSV.

Open the Thinkific template. Copy the Question column into QuestionText, the Explanation column into Explanation and Option A onward into Choice1 onward. Fill QuestionType with SA. Then star the right answer. Paste the Correct Answer column into spare column N, and in a helper cell a formula such as =IF(D2=$N2,"*"&D2,D2) returns Choice1 with an asterisk when it matches. Fill it across and down, paste the results back over the choices as values, and clear the helper columns.

Short answer questions have no Thinkific quiz type, so drop those rows or rewrite them as multiple choice. Save as .xlsx, upload through Import Questions, and set the passing grade.

Spec

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

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Template column	What Thinkific expects	Where it comes from in a VidQuiz CSV
QuestionType	SA for one correct answer (radio buttons) or MA for one or more correct answers (checkboxes). Required	Type the letters SA down the column. Our multiple choice and true or false questions both have one correct answer
QuestionText	The question. Required. Formatting such as italics and links is stripped on import	The Question column, as written
Explanation	Optional text shown to the learner after they submit	The Explanation column, one line per question tied to the video
Choice1 to Choice10	Up to ten answer choices. At least one is required	Option A to Option J. Our export has at least four option columns and widens to ten when a question needs it
The asterisk	An asterisk at the start of a choice marks it correct, as in *True	The Correct Answer column names the right option. One helper formula adds the asterisk in front of it
Sheet name QUESTIONS	Only the first worksheet imports and renaming a tab makes the import fail	Paste into the downloaded template itself rather than into a new workbook

Column names copied from the QUESTIONS sheet of the template linked from the Thinkific help center, and the rules from its INSTRUCTIONS sheet. The export side reflects our own CSV, which writes Number, Type, Question, Option A onward, Correct Answer, Explanation and Timestamp.

What you get with thinkific quiz

Questions drafted from the lesson itself

Paste the public YouTube link of a lesson, or the transcript of any other recording, and get the question, the answer options, the correct answer, a one line explanation and the timestamp it came from, one recording at a time rather than a whole chapter at once.

Built for the ten choice template

Our CSV writes one row per question with the stem, four to ten option columns, the correct answer and the explanation. That lines up with QuestionText, Choice1 to Choice10 and Explanation, so the move into the Thinkific file is copying columns and starring one cell per row.

A copy that lives outside Thinkific

Thinkific has no quiz export. Keep the question set as a CSV, a PDF with the answer key, QTI 1.2, GIFT, a Google Forms file or a Blackboard upload, so the questions survive a platform move.

What you can do

Everything thinkific 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 Thinkific quiz template from a recorded lesson
Quiz a YouTube lesson that the AI Quiz Generator skips
Write questions for chapters longer than 10,000 words
Stock a randomized question bank with more than 50 items
Get explanations written for every correct answer
Keep an exportable copy of every Thinkific quiz

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 thinkific quiz

From the Importing Quiz Questions article in the Thinkific help center, which links the .xlsx template. It has two sheets: QUESTIONS, where your rows go, and INSTRUCTIONS, which lists the SA and MA codes and the asterisk rule. Keep the file as it is and paste into it, since renamed or moved columns and sheets make the import fail.

No. The import reads .xlsx only, and the help center tells you to export as Excel format if your spreadsheet program saves something else. Open the CSV, paste its columns into the Thinkific template and save the template as .xlsx.

Not as a separate type. Thinkific quizzes have two types, one correct answer and one or more correct answers. A true or false question is a one correct answer question with the two choices True and False, and the template instructions use *True as their own example.

Every paid plan, from Basic up. Since August 13, 2026 Basic costs $54 a month, or $475 a year billed annually. The free plan does not include it. The help article on importing quiz questions names no plan requirement for the .xlsx template.

A source Thinkific cannot read. The built-in generator needs captioned video uploaded into the chapter and stops at about 10,000 words. VidQuiz drafts from a YouTube link or any transcript, tags each question with a timestamp, writes an explanation for every answer and keeps an exportable copy, which Thinkific itself does not offer.

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