For Canvas LMS instructors
Upload the reading you assigned, a textbook chapter, a journal article or a scanned handout. PDFQuiz writes the questions with the correct answers marked and gives you a QTI zip that Canvas imports as a quiz.
Upload your PDF and generate the questions
Click to upload or drag and drop
PDF, DOCX, PPTX, TXT, JPG, JPEG, PNG, HEIC, ODP, ODT, BMP, or TIFF
Up to 10 files at once, 50 MB each, merged into one quiz within the demo page limit
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The short answer
Canvas cannot turn a PDF into a quiz, it only imports QTI packages. PDFQuiz reads the PDF, writes multiple choice, multiple answer and true or false questions with an explanation for each, and exports a Canvas QTI zip. In Canvas you choose Settings, Import Course Content, QTI .zip file, and the quiz shows up under Quizzes ready to review and publish.
PDFQuiz is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Instructure or Canvas. The Canvas export is included in the Pro and Elite plans, see the pricing page.
The left side is a page from the PDF you upload. The right side is the question Canvas shows after the import, with the answer already marked.
12.3 Tools of monetary policy
The Federal Reserve steers short term interest rates mainly through the federal funds rate target and the interest it pays on reserve balances. Open market operations, the buying and selling of Treasury securities, adjust the supply of reserves.
Lowering the target rate makes borrowing cheaper for banks, which tends to push down loan rates for households and firms and to raise spending.
Pages 5 to 9 continue with quantitative easing and the discount window.
Question 1
1 pts
Which action adjusts the supply of bank reserves through open market operations?
General feedback. When the Fed buys securities it credits banks with reserves, and selling them drains reserves.
Illustration of the workflow. The zip carries the question text, the options, the correct answers, 1 point per question and the explanation as general feedback.
Four steps from the file on your desktop to a quiz in your course. You never retype a question.
1
Add up to 10 files, up to 50 MB each. For a scan, switch on OCR first so the pages are read as text.
2
Choose single choice, multiple answer and true or false, then set how many questions you want.
3
Reword a stem, swap a weak distractor, delete what you would not grade, and give the quiz the title students will see.
4
Download Canvas (QTI), then Settings, Import Course Content, QTI .zip file, and import.
After the job shows Completed, the quiz sits unpublished under Quizzes. Set the time limit, the attempts and the availability window, then publish. On a campus with New Quizzes, tick the option to import existing quizzes as New Quizzes before you start the import.
A long PDF is better tested a chapter at a time. Generate one quiz per chapter, import each as its own quiz, and you get weekly checks that match the reading schedule rather than one sprawling exam.
The Canvas file is a QTI 1.2 package in the layout Canvas uses for its own quiz exports, which is why it imports cleanly.
Every question imports at 1 point. Need the blank, matching and essay items in Moodle? The GIFT format converter carries all six types.
The deciding question is whether the questions exist yet. A PDF full of finished questions needs a formatter. A PDF of reading material needs something that writes the questions.
If forty finished questions with marked answers already live in a PDF, a formatter is the cheaper route and you should use one. PDFQuiz earns its price when a new textbook edition arrives, a course is rebuilt for online delivery, or a publisher sends a PDF with no test bank attached.
Reading the content instead of parsing a layout also means the PDF does not have to be clean. Multi column journal pages, headers and footers and figure captions are all fine.
3 types
Multiple choice, multiple answers and true or false in the Canvas zip
Classic or New
Imports as either quiz engine through the course import tool
10 files
PDF, Word or slides in one upload, up to 50 MB each
A reading quiz per assigned chapter or article, generated from the PDF you already posted in Files and imported into every section.
Module knowledge checks built from the subject expert's PDFs, without a round of interviews to collect questions.
Unit checks from a scanned workbook chapter or a district curriculum PDF, with a second version for makeup exams.
Policy and compliance quizzes written from the procedure PDF and regenerated each time the document is revised.
The quiz you generate also downloads in other formats from the same menu. For Blackboard, D2L or another platform that reads QTI 2.1, the QTI converter page explains which zip to pick. A review game comes out as a spreadsheet for PDF to Kahoot, and a paper test comes out as a PDF or Word file with a separate answer key.
Still deciding how to set the quiz up inside Canvas, with question groups, random draws and time limits? The Canvas quiz generator guide covers that side.
Upload the PDF to PDFQuiz, pick multiple choice, multiple answer or true or false, and generate the questions. Review them in the editor, then choose Canvas (QTI) from the download menu. In Canvas open Settings, Import Course Content, select QTI .zip file and upload it. The quiz appears under Quizzes, unpublished, with the correct answers marked.
No. Canvas lets you attach a PDF as a file or an assignment, but it cannot read questions out of one. Quizzes come in as QTI zip packages or as Canvas course exports. A PDF has to be turned into questions first, and those questions then have to be packaged as QTI, which is the two jobs this page does in one pass.
Yes, with the OCR option switched on before you generate. OCR reads the scanned pages, the questions are written from that text, and the Canvas zip is built the same way as for a digital PDF. Scans of photocopied articles and old handouts work best when the pages are straight and the print is dark.
Open the course, go to Settings and click Import Course Content. Set Content Type to QTI .zip file, choose the file, and import all content. When the job reads Completed, open Quizzes. The imported quiz is unpublished, so set points, the time limit and the due dates before you publish it to students.
Yes. If your school has New Quizzes enabled, the import screen shows a checkbox to import existing quizzes as New Quizzes. Tick it and the package becomes a New Quiz. Leave it clear and it becomes a Classic Quiz. The checkbox is controlled by your institution, so ask your Canvas admin if it is missing.
Three. Single choice becomes a multiple choice question, a question with two or three correct answers becomes a multiple answers question, and true or false stays true or false. Fill in the blank, matching and open ended questions remain in PDFQuiz and are left out of the Canvas file.
You can upload up to 10 files at once, each up to 50 MB, so a whole chapter or a short textbook section fits in one go. For a very long PDF, choose the page range you want tested, such as one chapter, and generate separate quizzes per chapter instead of one scattered set.
Yes. Each question carries a short explanation written from the PDF, and it imports as general feedback that students see after they submit. Every question imports at 1 point, which you can change per question in the Canvas editor, or for a whole question group at once in Classic Quizzes.
Working from a Word file instead? The Word to Canvas quiz converter does the same for .docx handouts, and PDF to quiz covers quizzes for students rather than Canvas.
Canvas Quiz Generator
Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes from your course files.
Word to Canvas Quiz
The same QTI zip from a Word document.
QTI Converter
QTI 1.2 and 2.1 packages compared.
Blackboard Test Generator
Tests for Blackboard Learn and Ultra.
Scanned PDF to Quiz
OCR for photocopied and scanned pages.
PDF to Quiz
Questions written from any PDF.
Upload the PDF, review the questions and their feedback, and import one QTI zip instead of building the quiz question by question.