Save files directly to Moodle from within Word, Excel, and Powerpoint

Microsoft Education Labs recently updated their Office Add-in for Moodle.  This nifty little add-in lets teachers save and load office documents (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) directly to/from Moodle without having to go through Moodle’s somewhat convoluted file upload process.  I gave it a try, and it works great for me:

After downloading and installing the add-in, the File menu in Word, for example, has two new options: Open from Moodle and Save to Moodle:

Altered file menu after installing the OAM

When you first try to load or save a file from Moodle, the add-in will ask you where your server is (and will remember it for next time):

Add you Moodle site by typing in its web address

My school’s Moodle site uses a username/password for each user (from an Active Directory LDAP authentication, if you must know).  So next, I was presented with a window to log on:

It presents the login page of my school's Moodle site

After the teacher logs into Moodle, they might be presented with a list of the courses they teach if the site is configured in a particular way.  I was not.  Luckily, though, the latest update to the add-in added the ability to search for a particular course.  Once added, it will remember your courses the next time you need them (although you might have to log in again).

You can search for your Moodle courses and save them for future use.

From there, you can browse through all of the course files for all of your classes, save your current document to your Moodle classes, and even load files that you’ve previously uploaded.

Save and Load files directly to/from your Moodle courses!

I’ve given this a try, and it works really well for me.  It won’t create a link to the file on your course page, though; you’ll have to do that part manually.  Still, this nifty little time-saving add-in is great for those of you who use Moodle for your course management, and I’d urge you to give it a try.  It works on the Windows versions of Microsoft Office versions 2003, 2007, and 2010.  (Sorry Mac users. Hopefully a Mac version will be forthcoming.)  For more information, and to download it, see the project page.