# How do I create or import a Practice question bank?

> **Option**: This feature is part of the Practice option. It only appears if your school has chosen it.

**In short**: A Practice bank is your own set of questions, created by hand with “Create a bank” or imported from a spreadsheet with “Import a bank”. It starts as a draft, holds 30 questions at most and needs 10 to be activated.

**Who this is for**: Teachers and school administrators who want to prepare exercises for their students.

**What you need first**:
- The Practice option, chosen by your school. Without it, the “Practice” entry does not appear in the sidebar.
- For an import, a spreadsheet of questions, with a zip archive if the questions refer to pictures, audio files or videos.

## Create a bank by hand

1. In the sidebar, click “Practice”.
2. Click “Create a bank”.
3. In the “Create a bank” window, enter the “Title”: it is required. Also fill in the “Category” and, if you wish, the “Description (optional)”.
4. Click “Create”. The bank opens, as a draft.
5. Click “Add”, choose a type under “Which kind of question?”, then fill in the “Instructions” and the answers.
6. Check the question in the “Student preview”, where you can try it, then click “Save the question”.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you have at least ten questions.

![Editor of a Practice bank with a question open and its student preview on the right](https://www.testfle.com/medias/aide/en/professeurs/creer-ou-importer-une-banque-d-entrainement-editeur-1440.webp?v=baa867f8be)

![List of Practice banks with their status badges](https://www.testfle.com/medias/aide/en/professeurs/creer-ou-importer-une-banque-d-entrainement-liste-1440.webp?v=21c7c4a070)

## Import a bank from a file

1. In “Practice”, click “Import a bank”.
2. To start from a template, click “Download the sample archive (spreadsheet and media, one question per type)”. Unzip the file `gabarit-banque-entrainement.zip`, then replace the questions in its spreadsheet, `questions.csv`, with your own, and the media in its `medias` folder with the files your questions refer to.
3. Enter the bank’s “Title”, which is required, then the “Category” and the description if you wish.
4. Choose your file under “Zip archive or bare csv”.
5. Click “Check the file”. This check writes nothing.
6. Read “What will be created”: the number of questions and their count by type. If there are “Issues to fix”, correct the file, choose it again and click “Check the file” once more.
7. Click “Confirm the import”. The bank opens, as a draft.

[Video: Importing a Practice bank: sample archive downloaded then dropped, check with a single warning and preview of what will be created, before Confirm the import](https://www.testfle.com/medias/aide/en/professeurs/creer-ou-importer-une-banque-d-entrainement-import.mp4?v=6577d8d266)
From the Practice page, the Import a bank window opens; the sample archive is downloaded there, a title is entered, the archive is dropped as it is and checked: no issue, a single warning (8 questions out of the 10 needed to publish), then what will be created, without confirming the import.

## The limits to know

- **The number of questions.** A bank holds 30 questions at most. It needs at least 10 to be activated, but not to be created or imported.
- **The media.** A question carries a single media file: a picture up to 5 MB, an audio file up to 20 MB or a video up to 50 MB.
- **The file size.** The zip archive is 200 MB at most, the spreadsheet 1 MB at most, and the archive contains 200 files at most.
- **What the archive contains.** It contains a single csv file, at its root. The media are in a “medias” folder, without an accent, at the root, and the spreadsheet refers to them by their plain file name. A bank without media is imported with the csv file alone, without an archive.

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## Understanding the settings and special cases

### What is a Practice bank?

A Practice bank is a set of questions that you write or import for your students, in class or at home. It is different from the placement test bank, which the school administrator imports and activates. Each Practice question is marked, and the student gets a mark out of 20, never a level. [What is the Practice area?](https://www.testfle.com/en/help/families-students/understand-practice) describes what the student sees.

A bank always starts as a draft: no student sees it. The next actions, activating, sharing and assigning, are covered in [How do I activate, share or archive a Practice bank?](https://www.testfle.com/en/help/teachers/activate-and-share-a-practice-bank).

### Who sees which banks?

A teacher sees their own banks and those the platform has delivered to the school. A school administrator sees all the school’s banks, and only they can display archived banks, with the “Also show archived banks” box. The server does the filtering: a colleague’s bank does not appear, even if you know its address. To use a colleague’s bank, go through “Shared banks”.

The list can be filtered by “Category” and by “Status”. The category is typed freely, with suggestions drawn from the existing ones. A new name creates a category when you save, and the screen says so: “New category: it will be created when saving.”

### Which types of questions can you write?

The editor offers eight types. Each has its own help on the screen.

- **“Single choice”**: the student chooses the correct answer among several.
- **“Multiple choice”**: several answers are correct, and the student must tick them all.
- **“Picture choice”**: the student listens or reads, then touches the right picture among three or four.
- **“Fill the gaps (dropdowns)”**: the student completes a sentence by choosing from lists.
- **“Put in order”**: the student puts words or groups of words back in the right order.
- **“Drag and drop labels”**: the student puts each label in the right box.
- **“Match labels to images”**: the student matches each label to the right picture.
- **“Labels on a picture”**: the student places each word on its zone of a drawing, and each correctly placed word is worth one point.

The editor checks each question before saving it. For example, it refuses a question without instructions (“Write the instructions.”), a single choice with no correct answer ticked (“Tick the correct answer.”) or a choice question with fewer than two answers (“At least 2 answers are needed.”). When the bank has 30 questions, the “Add” button is greyed out and the screen says “The bank is full (30 questions).”

### How do I add a picture, an audio file or a video?

Under each question’s form, the “Question media (optional)” area takes a picture, an audio file or a video shown with the instructions. The screen states the limits before you upload: “Picture up to 5 MB, audio up to 20 MB, video up to 50 MB.” The accepted pictures are .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif and .webp. The audio files are .mp3, .wav, .ogg and .m4a, and the videos .mp4 and .webm.

Pictures larger than 1,600 px are reduced before they are sent, and the original is not kept. The “Labels on a picture” type has no media of this kind: its drawing is uploaded in the question’s form, and the student only sees it with a watermark bearing their name.

Media count towards the school’s Practice storage space. If it is full, the upload is refused: “Not enough storage space:” followed by the space used, the total space and the space available, in MB. It is then up to the school administrator to free up space, or to ask the TestFLE team to raise the limit.

> **Good to know**: The same file is counted only once in the storage space, even if several questions use it.

### How does the check before the import work?

The check reads the whole file in memory and writes nothing. It counts the questions by type, reports each issue with its row, its column and what to fix, then gives a fingerprint of the file. The import can only be confirmed on the checked file: if you change the file, the screen clears the check and you have to run it again.

The sample archive contains a spreadsheet, `questions.csv`, with one question of each of the eight types, and a `medias` folder with the pictures and audio files those questions refer to. The spreadsheet’s columns are called “type”, “consigne”, “texte”, “image”, “audio”, “video” and “reponses”. Open it before you fill in your own: it shows how to write the answers for each type.

The archive can be dropped as it is, and it passes the check with no issue to fix. With its eight questions, it only gets the warning “The file has 8 questions; at least 10 are needed to publish the bank. You can add more in the editor.” Once imported, it gives a draft bank, which you can complete or delete. The old columns and the old type names are refused, with a message that gives the name to use.

On the screen, the blocking issues are listed in the “Issues to fix” table, with the “Row”, “Column” and “Issue” columns. As long as one remains, “Confirm the import” stays greyed out and the screen says: “Fix the file and check it again: the import stays blocked while an issue remains.” The “Warnings” do not block.

### If the import reports an issue

- If the title is missing when you confirm, the screen says “Give the bank a title.”
- An archive without a spreadsheet is refused (“The archive has no questions csv file at its root.”), as is an archive that contains several (“The archive holds several csv files: keep only one.”). A spreadsheet placed in a folder is refused too (“The csv file must sit at the root of the archive.”).
- A media file outside the “medias” folder is refused (“This file must be placed in the medias folder.”). So is a media file that the spreadsheet names but the archive lacks (“The file” followed by the file name in quotation marks, then “is named here but missing from the archive’s medias folder.”).
- Empty instructions are refused (“The instruction line is required.”), as are several media on the same question (“A practice question carries a single media file: fill only one of the image, audio, video columns.”).
- A file with no question is refused (“The file contains no questions.”), as is a file with too many (“The file has”, the number of questions, then “questions; a bank holds at most 30.”).
- A file with fewer than ten questions goes through, with a warning: “The file has”, the number of questions, then “questions; at least 10 are needed to publish the bank. You can add more in the editor.”
- A media file placed in the folder but used by no question also goes through, with a warning: “This file in the medias folder is not used by any question: it will not be imported.”

### Can a bank be edited after it is created?

Yes. The pencil next to the title opens the “Bank details” window, where you change the title, the category, the description and the linked material. In the list of questions, arrows and drag and drop change the order, and the bin deletes a question. This deletion goes through a browser confirmation window, which asks “Delete this question?” Closing the editor with an unsaved question also opens a browser window: “This question has unsaved changes. Discard them?”

An active bank can still be edited. However, the attempts already taken keep the questions as they were when the student started.

### If the screen says “This module is not enabled for your institution.”

The Practice option has not been chosen by your school: the “Practice” entry is missing from the sidebar, and the address of the space shows this sentence. To add it, contact the TestFLE team.

## Related articles

- [How do I activate, share or archive a Practice bank?](https://www.testfle.com/en/help/teachers/activate-and-share-a-practice-bank): In the editor of a Practice bank, “Activate” makes it assignable once it has 10 questions, and “Share” offers a copy of it to your colleagues in the school. “Switch back to draft” takes it out of service without deleting anything, and only a school administrator can archive it.
- [How do I assign a Practice bank and follow students’ attempts?](https://www.testfle.com/en/help/teachers/assign-a-practice-bank-and-follow-attempts): To assign an active bank, open it in “Practice”, click “Assign”, choose a class or a student, then set the attempts, the mode and the feedback. The “Assignments” page then shows who has finished, the marks out of 20 and the attempts to unblock.
- [What is the Practice area and how does it work?](https://www.testfle.com/en/help/families-students/understand-practice): Practice gathers the tests and writing tasks assigned by teachers, or opened by a library document. It opens from “Practice” in the menu and marks each test out of 20, without ever giving a level.
- [How do I take a Practice test and review my answers?](https://www.testfle.com/en/help/families-students/take-a-practice-test): To take a Practice test, open “Practice” in the menu, click “Start”, submit each answer, then click “Finish”. The screen then gives the mark out of 20, and “Review my answers” shows the correction.

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Written by the TestFLE team. Updated 13 November 2026.
https://www.testfle.com/en/help/teachers/create-or-import-a-practice-bank