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

BBweb links

To this

BB weblinks converted

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