Auto Save in Rich Content Editor

on Apr 22, 2015

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This is badly needed. We have had several people lost content they were writing in discussion posts and it would be useful when creating pages as well. Even here in the community Jive has this feature and I love it. Canvas needs it too!!

This idea was considered when developing our product plan for Q4 2019 and is not expected to influence development within Canvas at this time.
This idea will remain open for vote.
If this idea is in the top 10% by vote next cycle it will be reconsidered.

Read more about the feature idea process:
Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes
How does the feature idea process work in the Canvas Community?
What is the feature development process for Canvas?

52 Comments

christine_mckeon@harvard.edu May 14, 2015 12:00 PM
In addition to an auto-save feature, it would also be helpful if Canvas warned you before navigating away from unsaved content. Chrome, Safari and Firefox display a confirmation dialog when you try to leave a screen with unsaved content, but only when editing Pages. It's too easy to navigate away from unsaved content when editing the Syllabus Description, Assignments, Quizzes, etc...
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- David Lyons @ christine_mckeon@harvard.edu on Jun 29, 2015 5:11 PM
  I don't know how difficult autosave functionality everywhere would be to implement, but I like this suggestion, too. I went ahead and turned it into it's own feature idea so it can be voted on independently. :-)
  
  Warn before leaving unsaved item
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  - christine_mckeon@harvard.edu @ David Lyons on Jun 30, 2015 1:28 PM
    Thanks David Lyons!! Great idea -- I voted on it there.
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- Michael Stewart @ christine_mckeon@harvard.edu on Mar 19, 2018 7:41 PM
  I have done this an embarrassing number of times for creating an assignment for students. There's so much going on while i plan the course, so many things to coordinate. I go check something in some other tab/window/monitor and end up on some other blocking task, finally come back to continue assignment, computer decided I was done with long ago...
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  - Michael Stewart @ Michael Stewart on Mar 19, 2018 7:41 PM
    loving that this comment was autosaved before i posted it!
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Chris Long May 19, 2015 9:47 PM
I'm sure every teacher that uses Canvas has had the unfortunate experience of adding some thoughtful comments or content only to have it unexpectedly blown away. Even worse is when this happens to our students. If Canvas is a cloud native LMS it have cloud like utility features like auto save. So many times I'll suggest teachers or students startup a Google Doc or Word Doc then paste it in just to make sure they don't loose their work. Canvas should be better in this aspect.
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- Ryan Corris @ Chris Long on Mar 10, 2017 8:29 AM
  That is a great idea. However, it would be nice not to have to do the extra steps.
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- Ryan Corris @ Chris Long on Mar 10, 2017 8:32 AM
  A previous post stated that the hope was to have this implemented in 2016. Is this something that is still being worked on? Thanks!
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- Moses Wolfenstein @ Chris Long on Sep 13, 2019 11:32 AM
  I include this advice in my training course for teaching online, and then of course I completely failed to follow it and lost a fairly lengthy response post when our campus had a power outage!
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johnpj May 21, 2015 6:59 AM
This feature would be most useful for us in the assignments tool; as we often get comments from students that have spent hours working on an assignment only to realize their session has timed out and they have lost their work.
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Corey Jeffers Jul 2, 2015 7:41 PM
Google is setting the tone here again because many districts and universities are going GAFE. People aren't used to saving their work anymore... I am noticing that there is an auto-save feature at the bottom of this rich text editor I'm typing in right now. I think the LMS deserves the same attention as the community.
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Caryn Neiswender Aug 18, 2015 11:50 AM
This would be very useful throughout a Canvas course - this type of auto-save could help instructors and students retain in-progress work in virtually all parts of a Canvas course space. This is a medium priority for the UC Irvine community.
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csalazar Aug 19, 2015 4:03 PM
After some preliminary research, it looks like the recent upgrade in TinyMCE has a plugin that will support auto save functionality. I asked the developer who did the most recent upgrade to take a look at the plugin to help us estimate the effort required to implement it. I will update the forum when I have an update.
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- Renee Carney @ csalazar on Aug 19, 2015 5:08 PM
  This is excellent news Cosme Salazar. Thank you for the update!
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- Corey Jeffers @ csalazar on Aug 19, 2015 10:35 PM
  Awesome! After the Google delay, this will be an excellent consolation. This will really help people to feel more secure with putting more content in Canvas more often.
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- Kona Jones @ csalazar on Oct 1, 2015 12:34 PM
  Cosme, any update on this? Thanks!!
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Amber Hainline Sep 11, 2015 1:38 PM
We would benefit from this! We have several teachers who have requested this feature.
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Mary Lemons Oct 1, 2015 1:44 PM
Autosave is a very needed addition to the rich text editor. Students who are unable to complete their assignments in one sitting are very frustrated when they have to redo work.
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Adam Jinkens Oct 1, 2015 1:54 PM
Autosave is a very needed addition to the rich text editor. Students who are unable to complete their assignments in one sitting are very frustrated when they have to redo work. Students who have home work need the ability to save a draft of work so that it's there when they get home from school. As an advocate for Canvas, please add a button "Save" or "Save Draft". Thank you
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csalazar Oct 29, 2015 2:40 AM
There is a team that will be doing work on the Rich Content Editor (RCE) early next year, and adding auto-save functionality will be part of that project. This will likely be complete in Q1 (or maybe Q2) of next year.
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- Kona Jones @ csalazar on Oct 29, 2015 4:44 AM
  That is awesome!! Thanks for the update!!
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- Stefanie Sanders @ csalazar on Oct 29, 2015 6:43 AM
  This is great news, Cosme! Not even two minutes ago, I used the "Recover/Delete" functionality in Jive posts to retrieve a long reply I had almost finished composing and that Jive had kindly autosaved for me; being able to do that in Canvas as well would be nothing short of awesome.
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- Glen Whitney @ csalazar on Sep 17, 2018 4:53 PM
  This clearly needs more attention if it was scheduled for work in 2015-2016, and I lost significant work on a syllabus for Fall 2018 due to a login timeout without notice while working. Ultimately if Canvas wants to maintain its position, it needs to respect its users, in part by not wasting their time when it discards work they have done silently without any chance of recovery.
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- Moses Wolfenstein @ csalazar on Sep 13, 2019 11:47 AM
  What exactly happened here? This was posted in October of 2015. Here we are almost 4 years later. I heard autosave mentioned at InstructureCon, but it's not showing up on the current road map.
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Fr. John Andrew Doyle Nov 20, 2015 10:05 AM
Hello Canvas world,

I just want to promote the speedy implementation of this idea. I wrote a similar idea yesterday, but I am glad to not be alone. The plug for my idea which I dedicate to Susan for her original idea is as follows:

Have you ever been working on a post or a reply for a long time only to find that it disappeared? Perhaps, you tried to post it and read 'saving, saving, saving...' but nothing saved? Cry, complain, rant and rave all you like, but your hard work is sill lost forever! Now, let's ask ourselves need that be so? It is time for a change! I propose that Canvas automatically saves your unfinished work on or offline every ten minutes. Then Canvas support agents will have the joy of offering you back some good news for a change! Wouldn't a resurrection of data benefit everyone? All you have to do is vote for it.
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Isaac Piercy Dec 4, 2015 4:16 PM
This will be an amazing addition! Almost all of our instructional designers have reported loss of content at some point due to lack of auto-save. A common one is hitting the delete key while in the wrong area of a quiz which then initiates a key-board short-cut back button in their browser. Looking forward to this one!
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Howard Glasser Jul 18, 2016 10:07 AM
Stefanie Sanders Cosme Salazar Renee Carney Any update on this feature? I see that it's in the "In Development" phase and previous posts mentioned that this feature might be completed in Q1 or maybe Q2 of 2016. I'm wondering if there's additional information about a timeframe or other details about this feature. Thanks!
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ROSS BROWNING Jan 3, 2017 10:05 AM
Any update on this feature?
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Maya Crosby Mar 27, 2017 7:48 AM
Any update on this feature? COSME FLORES? This is desperately needed. It's the #1 most frequent complaint at our installation.
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Benjamin Dusek Jun 20, 2017 11:22 AM
As a teacher who uses canvas religiously, I would love to see an auto save in the rich content editor, as a teacher sometimes when you are working towards completing something with the rich text editor you get distracted and may even close out the window in which your working in. An auto save function in rich content editor would help me become a more productive teacher, in the event of a mishap. I look forward to seeing this function added to the wonderful rich content editor already!
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Dona Gibbons Jun 21, 2017 4:00 PM
As an administrator, we are always getting students asking to help locate their lost Discussion Board. Example, I had a student contact us where he was working on a discussion board in Canvas. His computer went to sleep and everything he had worked on disappeared. It did not save what he had worked on. He was still signed into Canvas when his computer came back up.

The auto-save for discussion board's Rich Content Editor would have come in handy for this student. This is not the first student who has typed away and not save a copy elsewhere that an expected event causes him/her to lose their type discussions.
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Erin Hallmark Nov 8, 2017 11:31 AM
Comments from Instructure
November 2017
Features for the Rich Content Editor have been reprioritized and this feature is not currently in development. We'll make an update when more information is available.
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Susan Nugent Jan 23, 2018 7:02 AM
Thank you Erin Hallmark for posting an update. I am disappointed that this not in development yet. It is desperately needed. In the meantime I will be encouraging students to use GoogleDocs to compose discussion posts.
Tips for Students Writing Discussion Posts
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Anne Karakash Apr 1, 2018 4:51 PM
So I see this conversation has been going on since 2015. It is now 2018 and I found my way here today after my cat jumped on my keyboard and I lost a discussion board post. There should have been a warning before it allowed me to "navigate away" with unsaved text in the box. I'm no software engineer, but this doesn't seem like a difficult feature to enact. After all, there is a warning when I look at an assignment and navigate away before submitting it - so you have the ability. Any thoughts on when you will take action on this?

Also, I just noticed that my message here was just auto-saved. I can assure you, this content is not as important as the content that is being graded. Come on, Canvas, you need to take care of this, please.
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Tim Maw Apr 30, 2018 4:13 PM
This would be extremely helpful and it seems like it could be added. Our institution is in the process of implementing Bridge and when I saw it has an auto-save feature I was excited and then my next thought was "I really wish they could add this to Canvas." I hope this is truly on the radar but, it does seem like Instructure has learned some lessons from Canvas with Bridge.
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John Boekenoogen May 4, 2018 5:39 PM
I can see this update to be a big plus in developing content.
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Renee Carney Jul 5, 2018 8:51 AM
This idea influenced the development of Quizzes.Next.
- Quizzes.Next is now available for all paid accounts.
- Quizzes.Next documentation will live in the Quizzes.Next User Group until July 14, 2018. On July 14, 2018, all of the documentation will be moved to the Canvas Guides in the Canvas Instructor Guide or Canvas Student Guide.
- Quizzes.Next updates will be included in the Canvas Release Notes. This includes new features, updated features, and relevant fixed bugs. New and updated features will be deployed to Quizzes.Next near the same time as the Canvas release. Fixed bugs may be deployed at any time.
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Cliff Cunningham Aug 13, 2018 3:16 PM
Three related "ideas":
https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1300-auto-save-in-rich-content-editor
https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/2169-warn-before-leaving-unsaved-item
https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/3155-a-way-to-save-a-draft-for-text-entries
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Joel Duffin Aug 20, 2018 10:35 AM
This is something I think we could implement rather easily using Global Javascript. Would that meet people's needs?
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Renee Carney Sep 5, 2018 1:51 PM
The Radar idea stage has been removed from the Feature Idea Process. You can read more about why in the blog post Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes.

This change will only impact the stage sort of this idea and will not change how it is voted on or how it is considered during prioritization activities. This change will streamline the list of ideas 'open for voting', making it easier for you to see the true top voted ideas in one sort, here.
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Johnny Vo Jan 11, 2019 12:56 PM
Auto-save is truly needed. Here is why
1. Certain competing LMS systems have at least a button allowing students to save their post as a draft. Auto-save would provide an even better experience and justify the use of transitioning to Canvas from another LMS system.
2. Often students are directed to use "work-arounds" to write posts, e.g. write your post in a word document, copy the text, and paste it to the content editor. This seems counter intuitive if the goal of the LMS system is to have a user-experience entirely within the system.
3. Running out of battery on a lap top/ power going out on a desk top, computer crashes, accidentally closing tabs, and log-in time outs are some of the reasons why an auto-save feature would be invaluable. These unexpected situations can really destroy all the time and effort spent on constructing a post. It really adds unnecessary stress, anxiety, and frustration when it can be solved with auto-save. I am not sure how easy it is to do from a technical perspective, but I imagine if Google can do it, so can Canvas.

I would suggest that we all repost this in our class coffee shop to get more engagement from our peers.
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Alexis Billotti Feb 6, 2019 12:54 PM
This is a huge problem, and could be easily implemented for discussion boards. I will have a discussion post completely typed or almost completely typed and I will hit backspace and instead of backspacing the letter or word I need to retype it will delete everything I just typed. There should be no reason that this can't be a feature, and I shouldn't have to constantly copy and paste what I am typing in my discussion board to a word document just to make sure it won't accidentally get deleted. Additionally, I would love if I am answering questions in the discussion board for a professor, if I want to answer one of the questions and say not all three, I can start doing so and save it and come back when I have the answers to the following questions not be forced to do it all at once or risk losing my answers.
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- Tim Maw @ Alexis Billotti on Feb 14, 2019 10:19 AM
  I can't remember how many times this happened to me as a student. It was really frustrating as I would have to start over several times. Now as an instructional designer, I have accidentally deleted information as I've built assignments and quizzes and had to start over. Luckily, I've gotten much more careful but I tend to save more often than I should have to.
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Morgan Woods Feb 19, 2019 7:22 PM
This would be extremely helpful. I've lost a few drafts because it doesn't save as I'm typing. It would help also because I wouldn't have to go back and forth from a word document.
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Rachel DeMarco Feb 23, 2019 9:50 AM
I can't tell you how many discussion replies I have lost this semester alone...and this is my first semester of using Canvas. This is very frustrating and time-consuming to not have this basic feature.
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Jeff Tobin Feb 25, 2019 11:53 AM
Canvas, it makes no sense that the method by which you prioritize creating solutions to your product's core functions would be through a public up/down vote system. This is ludicrous. The auto-save function is a must-have. Why should institutions continue to use this product if students are being told to not use one of its most basic and necessary function (which they are by it not working as effectively and efficiently as it should)? Please, for the love of god, get auto-save into production as quickly as is humanly possible so people stop losing their work and potentially having their grades suffer for it. College is not cheap, so I'm sure many people would appreciate it if Canvas would stop making it needlessly more difficult. Come on. You know it's needed, so just get it done. Thanks.
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- awilliams @ Jeff Tobin on Feb 25, 2019 5:40 PM
  Hey Jeff, I understand this is somethig you are passionate about. I wanted to let you know that Community feedback is a valuable part of the feature development process, but only a part of that process. There is a lot more to the prioritization that goes on and you can read more about that in What is the feature development process for Canvas?
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- Dean Holik @ Jeff Tobin on Apr 9, 2019 8:31 AM
  Hi Jeff,
  We had to do this with custom programming and couldn't wait any longer for the feature to be added as core code. We have too many students every month reporting that their discussion posts are missing or that they should write them in a MS Word document before posting.
  We're still testing our custom code but we'll hopefully roll it out in the next month. What we had to do was add a save button that students will have to click to save a discussion post in progress without actually posting it. I'll attach a screen shot so you can see.
  Thanks,
  Dean
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  - Jeff Tobin @ Dean Holik on Apr 20, 2019 4:14 PM
    This is certainly better than being forced to use a different program. I appreciate the update. Thank you.
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  - Jeff Tobin @ Dean Holik on Sep 13, 2019 11:38 AM
    Is there an update on this?
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Kaye White Apr 23, 2019 5:46 PM
I just worked 4 hours creating a lesson page and while researching for content, I accidentally closed Chrome instead of the tab for my research site. All was lost. Then, I noticed that this comment was autosaved! Please add autosave to Canvas.
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Michael Proeber Sep 24, 2019 3:37 PM
As a student, I've lost thousands of words in discussions from the lack of Autosave. It saddens me that after 4 years, Instructure is no closer to implementing it—scratch that. I see that these community forums conveniently Autosave customer complaints. Why haven't the developers implemented this in the actual product? Shame.
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