[ARCHIVED] Canvas Broken Links reported but not broken

[racheljimenez19]

When reporting broken links in a course, there seems to be a lot of them that show up as broken but when clicking on them, they are not actually broken. How do I fix this so that the unbroken link doesn't show up on the broken link validator? 

[SusanNiemeyer]

The Link Validator considers links to unpublished items as "broken." That's because these links will, in fact, be "broken" for your students.

At the top of the list of broken links, look for a little box next to the words "Show links to unpublished content."  Uncheck it. Then, you'll be able to see which links, if any, are truly "broken."

[Chris_Hofer]

We may need to get some additional information from @racheljimenez19 about the kinds of links she is seeing that the link validator is saying are broken.  I've experienced in my own testing and course building for other instructors that some links to external websites (those that link to websites/webpages outside of Canvas) sometimes will also cause an error with the link validator, but when I check the link myself, the site loads perfectly fine.  Not really sure why that is...but it's kinda strange.  🤔

[racheljimenez19]

So at my job, I am in charge of recording all the broken links within Canvas each semester. With this being said, there is a large number (1383) of external links that show up as broken in the broken link validator that are not actually broken when you click on them. @SusanNiemeyer when I check for broken links, I always do these steps so that can't be the issue, sadly:(. I was just wondering if there is a way to get rid of these false alarms for links that are not broken, so that when I record them each semester, I don't have to check through those 1,383 false alarms again. Any help will work! 

[igustafson]

@racheljimenez19 In this case it would likely be best to speak to Technical support so we can get specific examples and take a look as @SusanNiemeyer mentioned unpublished items can be marked as "broken" but they should say they are not published in the link validator. This can help how to contact the proper tech support https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Basics-Guide/How-do-I-contact-Canvas-Support/ta-p/389767