In Site administration > Grades, in General settings, for the “Include feedback in export”, we are using the “Default: No”. Also, for “Primary grade export methods”, we are using “Excel spreadsheet” option. However, when we are on any of the courses to download grades, the “Include feedback in export” is ticked off, which means feedback will be included in the output. Moreover, the already available option at the top of the page is set as “OpenDocument spreadsheet” instead of Excel. I am wondering why none of the options that I set on the Admin side are not set on the course side. Thank you for helping understand the issue.
Saeed S.
Moodle Mentor says:
This behaviour is expected, even though it can feel confusing at first.
Many grade-related settings in Site administration define defaults, not enforced rules. They set the initial state of options, but course-level users with the appropriate permissions can still change them when exporting grades.
One helpful way to confirm that your Site admin settings are working as expected is to look at a brand-new course created from scratch. In a new course, those site-level defaults should appear correctly. If they don’t, that’s a sign something may be off at the site settings level. If they do, it usually means the settings were changed within an individual course.
It’s also worth double-checking the setting itself in Site administration > Grades > General settings. For “Include feedback in export,” the checkbox should be unchecked when the default is set to “No”. (For some reason a “No” checkbox always feels a little less unintuitive than a “Yes” check!)
The export format shown at the top of the grade export page reflects the last-used option rather than the site default, and the “Include feedback in export” checkbox can be toggled at the point of export regardless of the site default setting.
This flexibility exists because different courses often have different reporting needs. If consistency is important for your organisation, the best place to focus is role permissions around grade exports, combined with clear guidance for instructors about expected workflows. In many cases, training and documentation are more effective than trying to lock everything down.
And, of course, if you could use some help diving deeper into this, we can connect you with our Moodle experts, who LOVE a good site settings puzzle.
