Exporting, importing, and duplicating Open edX courses

Exporting and importing courseware is a great idea if you wish to back up the course you've created, freeze a snapshot of course at a particular moment in development, or move a course from one Open edX site to another. It also happens to be one of the easiest processes in Open edX.

Exporting your course

First, start in Studio, and click the Tools drop-down menu. Then select Export.

From this page, there really is only one option - to click the big blue button Export Course Content To export your course.

On the Export page, there is a list of components that are and are not exported. Make sure you check it out and understand it when exporting.

After clicking Export, your computer will download a file that looks something like this. It usually happens fairly quickly. 

Feel free to rename this file to something that makes it obvious what it is. Just make sure you leave the .tar.gz part of the file name. It's also a good idea to put it somewhere on your computer where you won't lose it.

Importing your course

Now to import, navigate to the Studio of the course you would like to overwrite. 

Note: This is important! Whenever you import course content, you're essentially replacing the current course with whatever you are importing. Any content you have created in the course will be overwritten by whatever you are importing. 

Select the Settings drop-down menu, and then click Import. 

From this page, click the big green button that says Choose a File to Import. 

Then, locate and select the .tar.gz file you exported earlier. 

At this point, you will be asked to click a button that says Replace my course with the selected file. Just click it, and Open edX takes care of the rest. 

You'll be able to watch the progress of your course import, and after a few moments (depending on the size of the course), you should receive a message like this one below. 

You can also use the import-export process to duplicate a course.