Kim,
If the paper is in Word or PDF format, Canvas will try to render the file in the web browser without the need to download it. This is just a rendering and can't show everything that the actual application can show. With Word and PDF it's usually pretty close, but if the formatting gets complex at all or a font is used that is not standard for the web, the formatting may be off. For these cases it may be necessarily to download the file and have it open in its native application such as Word.
Rick
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