Hi
I hope this will be helpful to someone out there as I only recently realised the power of backup & restore for tidying up courses that have become full of old materials you no longer require.
I had a course with 30 sections but only the first section was being used for current materials so I took a backup (default options) and restored into the same course with "Delete the contents of the existing course and then restore" with default options EXCEPT at step 4. Schema:
- Keep current roles and enrolments: YES
- Keep current groups and groupings: YES
- and I unchecked all items, then only selected those I wished to keep
This left me with the same course, same enrolled users and their data but effectively deleted all the unwanted course materials.
NB please do take care to keep your original course backup (and preferably have access to a recent full backup) because selecting the wrong options with 'delete & restore' can leave users unable to access your course or remove materials you wanted to keep!
If in doubt, try restoring to a new course first and only over-write your existing course when you're happy you've done it right
Carol