[ARCHIVED] Error message saying user content limit exceeded

[Tobytheterrier]

When I try to attach photos, I get a message saying user content exceeded after posting just one photo. 
The same happens when I try to upload to my “Files”.

can anyone help?

[Chris_Hofer]

Good evening, @Tobytheterrier ...

When you are signed in to Canvas, click on the "Account" icon on the left-hand global navigation bar, and then select "Files".  When your files screen loads, near the bottom left corner of the screen, you should see a percentage out of some total storage space available for you (for me, this is 0% of 524.3 MB used).  What does yours say?  I you are at or beyond 100%, then you need to delete some files from your user files so you can free up some space to upload a photo.

Please let Community members know if you have any other questions...thanks!  Take care...be well.

[James]

@Tobytheterrier 

To follow up on what @Chris_Hofer wrote, I would go to your Account and choose Files, then look at the Conversation Attachments folder. If you've ever uploaded a photo to an instructor or attached a file to a message, it's there and they can quickly eat up the file quota. You can delete any that you don't need to keep and you can click at the top of the column to find the largest ones to get rid of first. These are not part of submissions, so you won't be removing anything you've turned in for an assignment by doing this.

There are other places it can happen, but with my students, that's almost always the problem area.

[Tobytheterrier]

That folder is empty, but I am perplexed as to why my total storage quota is only 52MB. Does that seem low?

[dskelley]

52MB is pretty tiny. There is not a ton you can store with that, which would explain why you might be reaching capacity when only uploading 1 photo (if it is a high resolution photo).

I can say that after messing with Canvas a ton as both a student and instructor, I don't often use all that much personal space.

If you are a student, then ultimately your submissions wont take up personal storage in Canvas.

If you are an instructor, your course has its own separate storage allocation (that might be higher then your personal allocation depending on what your administrator set it to).

[James]

So we shot the first one down. Here's a more complete list of files to check.

• Conversation attachments
• Media comments, probably in the unfiled folder, but I'm not sure
• Images uploaded as part of discussions, which are also likely in the unfiled folder.

The process is go into Account > My Files and then into each subfolder except for the Submissions, click on the size column and sort it by largest to smallest.

[Tobytheterrier]

Hello and thanks for your responses and thanks to the others who responded.  I have checked all the folders and they are empty apart from the main "My Files" which now holds just four photos of 3 to 5MB, and the message at the bottom says I have used 34% of my 52MB storage quota.

I am a student on an art class and we are using conversations in modules to share and discuss our work.  We can also submit them as assignments to our tutor but when we do that only she can see them.

I will obviously have to continue to delete photos as I go through the course to stay within quota but am just wondering if 52MB is a normal level for it to be set at?

[James · Accepted solution]

@Tobytheterrier 

The default quotas for users are set at 50 MB. A local Canvas administrator can change that, but users are created at the root account, so you cannot give users in one college or department a higher quota than another. Canvas is designed for the majority of users and it may be necessary for some institutions to make changes.

Using conversations to share content is not in line with Canvas thoughts on how things should work. They want work to be attached to an assignment so that it can be tracked and be organized rather than being a free-floating object. If you want other people to be able to see the work, then perhaps the instructor should set up discussions and allow attachments. If you attach an image to a discussion, then it does not count against your quota. This is different from embedding a file in a discussion, which counts against the quota (it seems Canvas changed something recently with quotas, but I cannot remember what it was right now.)]