Canvas Student deletion/removal

[vincent_doherty]

hi, we are still relatively new to Canvas, we are wondering what the best way is to delete students who have left the college? (we have a few thousand students to delete)

- Im guessing bulk SIS import deletion, would anyone have a template for that or advice?

Regards

NWRC

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF · Accepted solution]

Hi, so far we haven't deleted any students, since we need to keep the educational records.  Did these students you want to delete not do work in any Canvas courses?  Our system does not add them unless they are enrolled in a course.

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @vincent_doherty,

I came across this question while doing a community cleanup.  As a Canvas admin myself, I would second @Nancy_Webb_CCSF's statement about deleting users being unnecessary.  We do allow students to go back and see their old course content, so we wouldn't want to delete users anyways, but this has never been a problem.  As a caveat, I'd always advice checking with your Canvas CSM about your contract details to make sure there are no hard user limits or anything in your agreement, but as of the time I'm writing this post, I think that would be a pretty unusual contract clause.

-Chris

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF · Accepted solution]

Hi, so far we haven't deleted any students, since we need to keep the educational records.  Did these students you want to delete not do work in any Canvas courses?  Our system does not add them unless they are enrolled in a course.

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @vincent_doherty,

I came across this question while doing a community cleanup.  As a Canvas admin myself, I would second @Nancy_Webb_CCSF's statement about deleting users being unnecessary.  We do allow students to go back and see their old course content, so we wouldn't want to delete users anyways, but this has never been a problem.  As a caveat, I'd always advice checking with your Canvas CSM about your contract details to make sure there are no hard user limits or anything in your agreement, but as of the time I'm writing this post, I think that would be a pretty unusual contract clause.

-Chris

[jkuhns · Accepted solution]

Hi Vincent, you can go to reports, under settings, and export all of your users. This will give you the teachers and the student. I sort by ID number as the students id's start with ST. Copy and paste the students into a new csv. Change their status to deleted. Perform a SIS import of the new csv. This has worked for me in the past.

I'm not sure why the other answers were marked as solutions since they didn't address your question.