User Guide Cancel

Import questions from GIFT format files

Last updated on Jun 29, 2023 | Also applies to Captivate

Instead of adding question slides in Adobe Captivate Classic manually, you can choose to directly import question banks from GIFT files. Creating GIFT format files and importing questions from them is useful if you have to add large number of questions in your courses.

GIFT stands for General Import Format Technology using which you can create questions using plain text. These files can be saved as text files and can be imported into Adobe Captivate Classic or Moodle.

If you are using Moodle as your LMS, it is most likely that you already have questions in GIFT format. You can export the questions from Moodle and import them into your Adobe Captivate Classic courses. Or, you can directly import the files stored locally on your computer.

If you do not have the questions in GIFT format, you can quickly format your questions in the GIFT format. Then, save the files as simple .txt files, and then import them into Adobe Captivate Classic. Here’s the generic syntax the GIFT format:

::Question title with double colons:: Question goes here {Answers go here}

For more information on GIFT format, see this article.

Supported question types

Question type	Supported?
Multiple-choice
True/False
Short Answer
Matching
Essay
Description
Numerical questions

Format symbols

Symbols	Use
// text	Comment until end of line (optional)
::title::	Question title (optional)
text	Question text (becomes title if no title specified)
[...format...]	The format of the following bit of text. Options are [moodle], [plain], and [markdown]. The default is [moodle] for the question text, other parts of the question default to the format used for the question text.
{	Start answers -- without any answers, text is a description of following questions
{T} or {F}	True or False answer; also {TRUE} and {FALSE}
{ ... =right ... }	Correct answer for multiple choice, (multiple answer? -- see page comments) or fill-in-the-blank
{ ... ~wrong ... }	Incorrect answer for multiple choice or multiple answer
{ ... =item -> match ... }	Answer for matching questions
#feedback text	Answer feedback for preceding multiple, fill-in-the-blank, or numeric answers
{#	Start numeric answers.
answer:tolerance	Numeric answer accepted within ± tolerance range
low..high	Lower and upper range values of accepted numeric answer
=%n%answer:tolerance	n percent credit for one of multiple numeric ranges within tolerance from answer
}	End answers.
\character	Backslash escapes the special meaning of ~, =, #, {, }, and :
\n	Places a newline in question text -- blank lines delimit questions