This article provides a time-saving tip to help you efficiently clean up your question bank by quickly managing unused questions and categories.

Is your question bank becoming overwhelmed with unused questions and categories? Are you finding it challenging to sift through all the questions, and are you looking for a more efficient way to clean up the bank? Deleting questions and categories can be time-consuming, but with this time-saving tip, you can speed up the process and make managing your question bank much easier.

Scenario: You have numerous categories with questions, and you want to delete the categories and all the questions in the categories.

Move several categories to become a child category under one parent category. Delete all the questions within the Parent category (includes subcategories). Leaving it easy to delete the empty categories. This works best if the categories are all listed right after the other.

Example: I want to delete this group of categories and all the questions in the categories.

To begin, navigate to your Question Bank by selecting the More dropdown menu on your course homepage, then click Question Bank.

Once inside the Question Bank, locate and click the dropdown menu in the upper-left corner of the screen. From the options, select Categories.

Identify the group of categories that contains the questions you wish to delete.

For each category beneath the first one in the group (designated parent category), click the right-facing arrow to move it under the designated parent category. This action will make these categories subcategories of the primary category you are working with.

Example Before:

Example After:

After you have moved all relevant categories into the parent category, click on the name of the Parent Category.

Ensure that both the “Also show questions from subcategories” and “Also show old questions” options are checked.

Next, click the checkbox above the list of questions to select all questions.

Scroll down to the “With selected” dropdown menu and choose Delete.

Proceed by scrolling to the bottom of the page. As you do so, look for any questions marked with an asterisk. These questions cannot be deleted as they are actively used in a quiz.

Click Delete.

Navigate back to the Categories page.

You will notice that your selected categories show zero questions. The remaining questions have been marked as "old questions," which means they no longer count toward the active question bank. Click the trashcan icon next to each category to permanently delete it.

In cases where you have categories with old questions, Moodle will give you the option to move those questions to another category before it allows you to delete the category.

You can choose a category to move the questions to by selecting the category in the dropdown and clicking Save in Category.

Once completed, continue deleting any additional categories as needed.

This method offers a more efficient way to clean up your Question Bank. If you have any questions or need more assistance, please contact us.