Last year I taught an online course in my university Moodle website (back then, running Moodle 1.9) . There were a lot of forum posts in that course that I wanted to save for further analysis so I asked my university's technical staff a backup (.zip) of that course. So far, so good. I can import the zip file in my own computer where I have installed the latest version of Moodle (2.8.2), and I can see all my material BUT the forum posts. I think that it is due to the fact that my personal Moodle website hasn't any of the original users (names, ids, etc.) but I'm not sure. Moreover, I can see that original forums' posts (the text that forms that posts) are in the moodle.xml (inside the backup).
Is there any way to import/restore that posts? Should I manually create new users that fit the ID's of the original ones to do so?
Looks like forum posts are ignored when restoring a course backup from 1.9 to 2.x - https://docs.moodle.org/28/en/Course_backup#Backup_and_restore_from_1.9_to_2
An upgrade will probably work though... Install Moodle 1.9, then restore the course so its in the database. Check the forum posts are there. Then upgrade first to 2.2, then to 2.8 - https://docs.moodle.org/28/en/Upgrading_FAQ