Cannot get attachments to work in Cavas inbox

[mwarner2]

I am constantly having this problem where students attempt to send me an attached PDF file over the Canvas inbox and it always fails. As far as I know, the student never gets an error message and they assume I got the attachment. After several back and forth conversations, I get the student to use my regular university email, thus killing the whole point of using the inbox in Canvas. I've looked into this issue on my end and keep coming across directions on going to the Files section and then clearing out space in the Conversation Attachments folder. I've gone into my own Files section and cannot find any folder by that name, so again, I have no idea if students see the same thing or if I am looking in the wrong place. Can anyone point me to a simple to follow succinct guide on how to deal with issues like this for inbox? 

[mzimmerman]

Hi @mwarner2 

Make sure that when students are replying, they are actually going into the Canvas Inbox to compose the reply and add the attachment.

Many times, students are getting notifications with the contents of new Canvas Inbox messages sent to their email.  If they reply to that notification, the reply gets forwarded to the Canvas Inbox, but attachments included in the email do not get forwarded to the Canvas Inbox.

[dbrace]

Hi @mwarner2,

Just curious, is there a reason why you are not using Canvas assignments with the submission type set to "Online" and "File Uploads" set as one of the "Online Entry Options"?

How do I create an online assignment?

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-create-an-online-assignment/ta-p/950

I ask because:

• by default, the quota for a Canvas user account is only 50 MB
  • unless you are using "Free-For-Teachers", as documented at https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Resource-Documents/Canvas-File-Quotas/ta-p/387061
  • admins are able to change the quota for every user account (it cannot be changed for just one user) to something else (my institution, a two-year college community has it set to 100 MB)
• in general, the Canvas experience for faculty and students is best when using Canvas assignments to collect/submit work

-Doug

[mwarner2]

@dbrace Thanks for your feedback. My situation arises more so when say a student is sending me a PDF file for a presentation that they have on that paper, so the presentation may be the assignment and not the PDF per se. I realized that many of my woes are being created by how @mzimmerman described the issue where a student will reply to me outside of the Canvas inbox and their attached file is scrubbed before it can reach me. 

[dbrace]

You are welcome, @mwarner2. Thanks for the additional context and follow-up information.

-Doug