Canvas Speedgrader Comments Disappear After Being Saved

[JenniferONeill]

I made meticulous comments on my students' work and it disappeared. This is not a case of not clicking submit, I was able to go back and refer to these comments and then all of a sudden they were gone. 

There are literal YEARS worth of comments that this is happening and it seems Instructure isn't doing anything about it, including acknowledging that it's their problem. 

This is a real problem when you're telling students that you've given them full comments and they see nothing - especially when they really love to go up the ladder if they're unhappy with a grade. Canvas has taken a relatively stressful part of faculty life and made it unnecessarily and exponentially more difficult. 

Fix the issue. Be up front with your customers. Know that there are plenty of other LMS out there and that when you hang faculty out to dry because of faulty code and lack of accountability, we will absolutely make it our mission to get our colleges and universities to switch to anyone who isn't Instructure.

[JeffCampbell]

Out of curiosity, are their multiple submissions? I have noticed that when a student resubmits work after making a comment, the system sees that comment as part of the prior submission. There is a drop down in the top right where you can see prior submissions, but it only shows up if there are multiple submissions. If you see this, the select a prior submission and your feedback should show up.

I feel that comments should be visible regardless of the submission, but maybe with a notation indicated something like "*Feedback on Prior Submission" as a flag for users. This may not be the issue in your situation, but I thought I would mention it just in case that is what is happening.

If you only have a single submission and the comment is disappearing, that is concerning. I have not had that issue, so am not familiar with it. I would suggest contacting Tech Support through a Help Ticket, but your post suggests this is a known issue by Instructure. I have nothing other than to say that you consider Submitting an Idea for how you would improve it, not just to fix the issue, but maybe to make it better.

[JenniferONeill]

No, it isn’t an issue of multiple submissions. These are fully submitted, saved comments on individual and group assignments in SpeedGrader. If you search for this issue you’ll find people have been talking about it for years with no actual fix.

[Hildi_Pardo]

I'm so sorry this is happening, @JenniferONeill -- I haven't had any teachers report this issue, so it's really hard to know what is happening.  @JeffCampbell suggestion is a good one -- is it possible that these were comments to previous submissions of a same assignment, and when students resubmitted it's hard to find the original comments?

Is this from Comments in the actual speedgrader tray?  Or comments made on documents they submitted?

It's hard to help without being able to see the issue.

[JenniferONeill]

Please read my response to Jeff. This is from Comments in the SpeedGrader area/tray. Showing you a picture wouldn’t really help - if you know what a comment looks like in SpeedGrader and what SpeedGrader looks like without a comment, that’s what it looks like. The comments were even there to go back to later, and then they just were not there. As if an earlier version had been restored without an earlier version having been restored. It was there and then it wasn’t. 

[JenniferONeill]

Just a side note - comments don’t disappear by submission. They’re visible regardless of which iteration you’re viewing. 

Besides that, my comments disappeared from a quiz that only allowed one attempt. 

[JeffCampbell]

What I mean by disappearing...on my end, if I have put a comment on a submission and then a student resubmits the work, it sometimes will not show the prior comment unless I choose to look at a prior submission. This is only seen in Speedgrader for me. The comments have not disappeared, technically. However, on my end they do appear to be connected to the submission prior to the comment being made and Speedgrader does seem to hide those prior comments when a student resubmits their work. I cannot say if this is just something on our end or site wide. It is just what I have observed (and it did not used to treat comments this way).

[Hildi_Pardo]

That is so weird and so frustrating..  My teachers would definitely be reporting this to me and to Canvas.   The few times comments are "lost" for my teachers, its usually more of a user error (like not Saving, as you mentioned), or needing to clear the cache.

So I have to wonder if rather than a Canvas issue, if it might be a device issue?   What device do you use?  What browser?  Is everything up-to-date?  Have you tried clearing the cache?   Sometimes these things solve frustrating things like that.

Otherwise, I'm at a loss, and I would recommend contacting your Canvas Admin at your institution/school, and having them reach out to your Canvas Support Manager (CSM).   They can help escalate any support tickets you've submitted to Canvas.

[JeffW]

Hi @JenniferONeill 

I am so sorry to see that you have been having issues with comments disappearing from submissions in Speed Grader! I spent a little time trying to recreate what you experienced in my own Canvas. I went through some different scenarios that other community members had brought up but unfortunately I wasn't able to replicate it. I would strongly advise opening a ticket with support as soon as you can so that it can be investigated. I find that it's best to do it as soon as you notice the issue so that changes can be seen in Beta before it resets on Saturdays.

[JenniferONeill]

 This post was from May 8th, so we've gone through several Saturdays since then. Your response was marked as the solution to the issue, which is absolutely incorrect. Much like others who have posted about this topic, there is no resolution provided by Instructure other than "we can't make it do that, so...". Not great.

[SethThomas]

I agree with Jennifer. Canvas will just arbitrarily erase comments at times for no reason without the user changing any setting or having any other caveats suggested by some members in this discussion. I'm having the same issue today with every paper in one of my classes. It seems to be some kind of glitch that Canvas has never repaired, and it is completely frustrating and unacceptable. 

As Jennifer noted, fix the problem. We are tired of this occurring. We have enough work to do without having to do it twice. And stop suggesting that the solution has been found because clearly, it has not. 

[embleton]

Same issue April 2025.
Interestingly, the TA and instructor comments ARE visible if I go to gradebook > cell > tray. But the same comments are NOT visible in speedgrader.
I am a Canvas admin at my school so I could verify from my admin role and their roles, on different computers and browsers. Odd.
In the example I am looking at, the student's uploaded file is on the larger side (8M PDF file).
This is not a problem that I remember being reported here.

Karla

[PaulaGYoung]

Embleton,

I'm an admin, too, and you're right. I've got a few details to add.

One of my colleagues is reporting this issue, as well. For them, the vanishing comments in SpeedGrader subsequently prevented them from reassigning the assignment.

That is, SpeedGrader saw and registered "no comments", so kept the [Reassign] button disabled. 

The full set of comments for the assignment was downloadable within SpeedGrader's link at the bottom (as a PDF). 

Students could see the feedback comments when they viewed the assignment after grading.

Instructor could see the feedback comments in the same way you described, Embleton: gradebook -> cell containing grade -> arrow to open tray -> view feedback.

Instructor's settings are for automatic posting.

The assignment was a group assignment; the problems occurred for students who are not assigned to a group.

This is not browser or device specific, as I also cannot see the comments.

~Paula

[HellenPacheco]

I have experienced the same problem due to students not being assigned to a group. When I submit a comment (as the instructor) I get a message saying the message has been sent to the whole group. Then they disappear. If the student tries to message me in the comment section they show on Speed Grader (not on the assignment), but any attach files also disappear.

[FSSimone]

Hi there, we also have this problem. A teacher made comments to criteria 1  and afterwards his TA made comments to criteria 2 and 3. Comments by the teacher for criteria 1 are gone. Why? 

Facts: Group Assignment with only one submission