Permanently restore older version of quiz

[urbansk6]

Hi all,

I made a stupid, stupid mistake trying to fix an issue in a quiz, after students had already started taking it, and I pressed "cancel" so my changes wouldn't save. When I went in and tried to edit/preview it after hitting "cancel," I saw that my unwanted changes had somehow saved anyway, and I panicked.

I stopped panicking when I noticed the "You have made changes to the questions in this quiz. These changes will not appear for students until you save the quiz" message, and fortunately when I went into student view I saw that the content I had accidentally deleted was still there. So temporarily, I'm fine.

My question is how do I tell Canvas that I do not, in fact, want to "save it now" and would like the old version back permanently? Is there a way to keep it the way it was besides just never pressing "Save it now?"

[Steven_S]

This happens with Classic quizzes, but I do not believe it is possible with New Quizzes.  Unfortunately, the only option I have found is to retype the deleted content.  For your current course you can just leave the changes unsaved, but any copy of this quiz will be copied with it already saved.  In student view, you can copy and paste to a word document, and then in your normal instructor view, click edit instead of save, and recopy the content back to where you deleted it from.

[urbansk6]

It is a Classic quiz. Sorry, didn't quite catch your meaning—are you saying it is possible to do what I'm asking with Classic quizzes, but not with New quizzes? Or are you saying that what I'm describing is something that only happens with Classic quizzes, but what I'm asking to do isn't possible under any circumstances?

Unfortunately it's not as simple as retyping the content—it was a media comment that someone else recorded (in Canvas) and uploaded. There's no chance that recording got saved anywhere on Canvas, is there? For that matter, I'd also like to know how I made the mistake in the first place—there were two media comments, this instructor asked me to delete the second one, I deleted the second one, and the first one disappeared.

[Steven_S · Accepted solution]

This is only a problem in classic quizzes.  I have never been able to find a way to accomplish the solution you seek (canceling the change) in classic quizzes.  In new quizzes there is not a separate step to save the updated quiz, the content would simply be gone.  (So perhaps there is only a solution in classic quizzes!)  

I do not use media comments, but every image I insert anywhere ends up saved in files, so you might look there.  Since you can see it in student view it is definite saved somewhere.  You can probably download a copy while in student view.  If not, you may need canvas support to help you find it.  Also, the other instructor probably has a copy in other previous or current copies of the course.

[urbansk6]

Thanks for your responses, but it looks like everything is sort of perfectly set up for none of those solutions to work—she did the recording in Canvas without saving it to her computer, this is the first time she's teaching this course online so we don't have it elsewhere, we had it set up so students couldn't download the media (to minimize cheating), and the media file isn't in Files. I guess she'll just have to re-record.

[Steven_S]

Sorry, it is there somewhere, but it sounds like you will need at least a canvas admin if not canvas support to access it.

[urbansk6]

Well, I appreciate your taking the time to try and help me figure it out!

[graycg]

This is not a solution--merely a statement that there is no solution. So the problem is not "solved".

[routledge]

There needs to be a way to discard unsaved changes!  If I hit save now who knows what sort of chaos will happen as it regrades etc.  Help would be appreciated