Copying overwrites existing material.

[richarrv]

When I copy canvas course material into another course, it overwrites the existing material. How to I prevent this? I want to add the new material to the course, not replace the existing material.

[erinhmcmillan · Accepted solution]

Hi, Ramona,

If Canvas detects the same content from one course to another, it will be overwritten. If you want to make the content appear to be new content, I'd recommend duplicating the content so it has a new content ID and title. You can learn how to duplicate content by referencing the articles about duplicating content from the Canvas Guides here. You can duplicate assignments, module items, modules, pages, and discussions.

Once you're ready to import the new content, you can use the Course Import Tool to import specific content and select only the new duplicated content you want to import— see How do I select specific content as part of a course import? And if the Direct Share functionality is enabled for your institution, importing to another course is even easier: use this Direct Share guides filter to read about the content item you want to share to your course.

Hope that helps!

Erin

[Andrew42]

Duplication appears not to be an available option for activities such as Surveys.

The alternative is 'Copy to...', at which point you may strike an issue such as:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Question-Forum/Can-t-Copy-a-Quiz-from-Commons-or-Course-wi...

Thanks

[FajardoGomez]

Can't the overwritten assignment be recovered in any way? I renamed a copy of a quiz and lost all submissions! I agree with the user who said this sounds like more of a bug than a feature, a copy of an assignment should be created with a new ID by default, and duplicating should have the same functionality as copying. 

[richarrv]

Thank you! Yes! Changing the title worked!

[darren_ponman1]

This seems more like a bug than a function to me. Almost every other cloud based system gives you the option of overwriting material before it occurs, or better still makes a copy when it duplicates and adds the suffix 'copy' or something similar. We are losing a lot of resources from our site due to this painful and overlooked bug.

Making a copy of content in the course that the resource is being duplicated into, or at worse, a notification stating that this will overwrite existing content needs to happen, PLEASE.

Please fix asap!!!