The hardest part of migrating web links is extracting the URLs from Blackboard Vista. It’s fiddly, laborious, and unless you a have a massive list of links it may be quicker do it manually. As far as I know this can’t done automatically as part of the BB to Moodle migration (I could be wrong – in fact I would be quite happy to be wrong) .
But if you’re the bunny who has to do this for a truckload of other people I am about to be you’re new BFF. You do need to know how to insert macros into spreadsheets for this to work.
Using these macros I went from this
To this
In about 25 seconds
If you are a Monash person and need a bit more instruction let me know.
The first stage is to get the links out of BB and into excel. This is outlined in ‘Getting Blackboard URLs into Moodle – Part 1’
Here are macros I used
Sub DeleteColA()
Dim FoundCell As Range With Worksheets(“Sheet1”).Range(“A:A”) Do Set FoundCell = .Cells.Find(What:=”*”, _ After:=.Cells(.Cells.Count), LookIn:=xlValues, _ LookAt:=xlWhole, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, _ SearchDirection:=xlNext, MatchCase:=False) If FoundCell Is Nothing Then Exit Do End If FoundCell.Resize(1, 1).EntireRow.Delete Loop End With End Sub |
Look in Wooksheet1 in column A
If any entry if found in any cell in Column A Delete the entire row |
Sub Tidyup()
‘ ‘ Tidyup Macro ‘ Range(“B1”).Select Selection.Delete Shift:=xlUp Columns(“D:D”).Select Selection.Cut Columns(“A:A”).Select ActiveSheet.Paste Rows(“1:1”).Select Selection.Insert Shift:=xlDown, CopyOrigin:=xlFormatFromLeftOrAbove Range(“A1”).Select ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = “Link Name” Range(“B1”).Select ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = “URL” Range(“A1”).Select ‘– delete empty rows Dim cel As Range, rng As Range Set rng = Range(“A2”, Range(“A65536”).End(xlUp)) For Each cel In rng If cel.Value = “” Then If cel.Offset(, 2).Value = “” Then cel.EntireRow.Delete End If End If Next cel MsgBox “Task complete!”, vbOKOnly + vbInformation, “Complete!” End Sub |
Delete B2 to align the Name and the URL into the same row
Cut and paste column D into A Insert a row Add the heading ‘Link Name’ Add the heading ‘URL’ Delete the empty rows |