Can colors/highlighting be used in the Discussions?

[acampbell3]

I provide extensive feedback on my students' drafts. I open their MS Word documents and use highlighting and red font to insert comments/feedback. I then copy the draft with my comments/highlighting and paste it into the discussion post as a response to their draft.  When I went to post my feedback to the Peer Response Discussion, none of my highlighting or font colors showed up, making my feedback indistinguishable from the student's essay. It was all the same color.

I realize I could use an attachment, but the whole point of the draft response discussion is for others to read drafts and my feedback.

Is there a way to preserve the comments and highlighting on the Discussion so they stand out to the student?

Below is a sample of what my feedback should look like, but when I posted it in Canvas on the discussion, everything was the same color and nothing was highlighted:

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hello there,  @acampbell3 ...

At first, when I read through your question, I was asking myself, "Why aren't you using the commenting feature inside of Word to add comment bubbles alongside the feedback you are giving to your students in the Word documents?".  Then, as I read through the rest of your posting, I understood why you weren't using this.  Unfortunately, in my own testing, when I created a Word document similar to the one that you included with your question, the only thing that did transfer from Word to a Canvas discussion post in the RCE (Rich Content Editor) was the italicized text.  The other text that I had highlighted yellow or colored red did not transfer at all into Canvas.  I also checked the HTML code, and it didn't include anything telling Canvas to highlight or color the text.

However, I found a work-around that you can use.  It will take a couple additional steps, and the code might not be real "clean", but it should work.  Here's what to do:

1. Go to Convert Word Documents to Clean HTML 
2. Paste your test from Word into the online editor (assuming that you've completed all your highlighting, text coloring, etc.)  It should display similar to what you had in your Word document.
3. Click the "convert to clean html" button.
4. You will see three tabs.  Click the "Original HTML" tab.
5. Select all of the code that appears, and press Ctrl+C on your keyboard to copy it.
6. Go to your Discussion topic, and begin replying to a post.  In the RCE, click on the "HTML Editor" link at the top right corner of the RCE.
7. Paste (Ctrl+V) in the code you harvested from the website in Step #1.
8. Click on the "Rich Content Editor" link at the top right corner of the RCE to return to the normal editing mode.  Your text should look like it was in the Word document.

I hope this will be of some help to you, April.  Please let me know if you have any questions about this...thanks!