Canvas is not letting me view files without downloading them. Is there a way to fix this?

[u1021367]

I can't view any of the files or powerpoints for my classes without downloading them. Is there a way to fix this?

[kblack · Accepted solution]

Hi  @u1021367  Welcome to the worldwide Canvas Community!  Hanna, this should be a setting that can be enabled in the browser you are using.  I did a quick search using everyone's favorite search engine, Google, and found this for Chrome users:  How to Change Google Chrome Downloads Settings: 7 Steps  and this for Firefox users:  Change what Firefox does when you click on or download a file | Firefox Help .  I did not check others, but I imagine you can find similar settings for most other browsers.

Insofar as Canvas specifically is concerned, IF your instructors have left the Files menu area available (and not all do), if you head to Files and click directly on the file name, Canvas should automatically display it in the Canvas previewer, which is called DocViewer; it should not be downloading it.

Hope this helps a bit.

[Last second edit] - Oh, and most attachments in Assignments, Pages, etc. should have a little magnifying glass/previewer icon next to it.  This allows you to preview the document in the DocViewer program without downloading it.

[kblack · Accepted solution]

Hi  @u1021367  Welcome to the worldwide Canvas Community!  Hanna, this should be a setting that can be enabled in the browser you are using.  I did a quick search using everyone's favorite search engine, Google, and found this for Chrome users:  How to Change Google Chrome Downloads Settings: 7 Steps  and this for Firefox users:  Change what Firefox does when you click on or download a file | Firefox Help .  I did not check others, but I imagine you can find similar settings for most other browsers.

Insofar as Canvas specifically is concerned, IF your instructors have left the Files menu area available (and not all do), if you head to Files and click directly on the file name, Canvas should automatically display it in the Canvas previewer, which is called DocViewer; it should not be downloading it.

Hope this helps a bit.

[Last second edit] - Oh, and most attachments in Assignments, Pages, etc. should have a little magnifying glass/previewer icon next to it.  This allows you to preview the document in the DocViewer program without downloading it.

[AndrewRodddd]

I am having the same issue. I followed the solutions to posted to this but none of them seem to work, maybe they are just outdated. Is there any current method to fix this?

[Robbie_Grant]

 @u1021367 ,

Were you able to find an answer to your question? I am going to go ahead and mark this question as answered because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need. If you still have a question about this or if you have information that you would like to share with the community, by all means, please do come back and leave a comment.  Also, if this question has been answered by one of the previous replies, please feel free to mark that answer as correct.

Robbie

[Draco]

I came across this exact issue in Chrome recently and wanted to add the correct solution, because kblack's link doesn't solve the problem in that browser. What he links to for Chrome only shows to how to change the default download folder and to instruct chrome as to whether to ask where to place a downloaded file.

Solution:

1. Download the file.
2. In the download bar, you will see the file with an arrow to open a menu for the file.
3. Select the option: "Always open files of this type"

After this, that particular type of file will always open in the Chrome browser. 

[111566552512078]

Were you able to find an answer to your question? I am going to go ahead and mark this question as answered because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need. If you still have a question about this or if you have information that you would like to share with the community, by all means, please do come back and leave a comment. Also, if this question has been answered by one of the previous replies, please feel free to mark that answer as correct.

[AndrewRodddd]

I have not been able to solve this solution yet and nothing i have tried has worked.

[AbdulMahama]

All the solutions posted here do not solve the question been asked. Therefore, this question should not be marked as "Solved". @kblack gave wrong solution to the question been asked, @Draco came close but yet still did not give the correct solution to the question. I wonder why @Robbie_Grant  and @111566552512078 were so quick to mark this question as "answered", their claim is that "because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need". What about if the original poster @u1021367  were hopeless-and-helpless and decided not to come back? This is unfortunate.

Let me reiterate what the original poster @u1021367 want (and many of us). Imagine you have a large class size (e.g. >=100) and each student is uploading a screenshot/picture of their solutions to canvas. The instructor has to download all the uploads, grade them and come back to canvas and record their grades; this is not good. In as much as all the downloaded student files occupy unnecessary storage space on your laptop, it makes grading unpleasant.

There should be a way such that students uploaded file can be seen, just like how their typed-texts can be seen in SpeedGrader WITHOUT DOWNLOADING the files. This will save much time for instructors grading a large class size.

I rest my case.

[Chris_Hofer]

Good evening, @AbdulMahama ...

---

All the solutions posted here do not solve the question been asked. Therefore, this question should not be marked as "Solved". @kblack gave wrong solution to the question been asked, @Draco came close but yet still did not give the correct solution to the question. I wonder why @Robbie_Grant  and @111566552512078 were so quick to mark this question as "answered", their claim is that "because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need". What about if the original poster @u1021367  were hopeless-and-helpless and decided not to come back? This is unfortunate.

---

The reply from Ken Black (now retired, so you won't hear back from him) in late August 2017 was back when this Community website was using a different platform/interface.  In that platform, people could mark one answer per question as "Correct".  With the platform you and I (and many others) are now using, people can mark responses with the "Solution" button.  The one difference is that multiple solutions can be marked for a given question.  In a way, that's nice because there may be more than one solution available to accomplish the same task.  However, I do agree with you that the response marked as "Solution" from @111566552512078 wasn't exactly a solution, so I've gone ahead and un-marked that response.  Also, it's not necessarily true that @Robbie_Grant and @111566552512078 were the ones who marked their own responses with the "Solution" label.  It's really possible for anyone to mark someone else's response as a "Solution"...and I don't know who marked those two replies as such...as it's probably been quite a while since they were marked with "Solution".

Let me reiterate what the original poster @u1021367 want (and many of us). Imagine you have a large class size (e.g. >=100) and each student is uploading a screenshot/picture of their solutions to canvas. The instructor has to download all the uploads, grade them and come back to canvas and record their grades; this is not good. In as much as all the downloaded student files occupy unnecessary storage space on your laptop, it makes grading unpleasant.

---

I re-read the original question from @u1021367, and I am not sure I completely agree with you.  The user states, "I can't view any of the files or powerpoints for my classes without downloading them."  (highlighting is my own)  When the user states, "for my classes", I interpret this to mean the user is a student trying to view files or PowerPoints provided by his/her instructor in the class.  To me, it sounds like this student was having trouble viewing the files on course content pages.  I'm not sure if this student ever came back to this topic to look at responses that were provided.  But, we can only hope that the student was able to get some help either from some of these replies or from people at his/her school.

This next part is a lot of speculation on my part, so I apologize in advance if I have misinterpreted anything you've described...

While I'm not positive, it sounds like you might be an instructor?  And, it sounds like you are asking about files submitted to assignments in a Canvas course.  Though, I am not sure why you are needing to first download all the files and save them on your laptop.  Can I ask...what type of files are you possibly working with?  Are the images standard documents like Word documents, PDFs, or images?  Those should all be viewable in the Canvas SpeedGrader, and there wouldn't be a reason to download them (though I'm sure there are reasons you want to download them).  Just in case, here is a video tutorial on how to use the SpeedGrader: SpeedGrader Overview (Instructors).

There should be a way such that students uploaded file can be seen, just like how their typed-texts can be seen in SpeedGrader WITHOUT DOWNLOADING the files. This will save much time for instructors grading a large class size.

---

This makes me very curious about what kinds of files students are uploading as part of assignment submissions.  Maybe if you can help identify the kinds of files that are being submitted, that would be helpful.

I'm not sure if any of this will be of help to you, but I wanted to at least chime in to provide some of my own insights...for what it's worth.  Looking forward to hearing back from you about these things...thanks!  Take care...be well.

[lhughes]

Chris_Hofer,

I am an instructor.  I came to this discussion late, but I have a similar problem which may well need a similar solution.  In a recent discussion, students submitted partial drafts (usually as .doc or .docx but occasionally as a .pdf).  Some of these attachments could be "viewed" right in the Canvas platform (easy!) and some required me to download them into Word (annoying).  I have tried but cannot find any difference bewteen the documents attached that would explain this issue.  I am using Chrome for all of this work and my Windows is fully updated.  Could the difference in my ability to view the attachments from students be related to  the browser the student used to upload the attachment?  Could it be the version of Word they're using?  

I ask since I'd love to be able to give students clear instructions for adding attachments that would make my viewing easier (and therefore make my grading more efficient).  Ideas?

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @lhughes ...

(You can type the @ symbol to mention people rather than having to type out our user names, by the way.)

I don't think that using different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, etc.) should play a part in why you are having difficulties with files submitted by your students.  I know that for regular assignments (not discussion posts), you can restrict the types of files that can be submitted to you.  For example, if you only wanted students to submit *.docx and *.pdf files to you, you could specify that in the assignment settings.  See the section on "Restrict File Types" about 3/4 of the way down this page:

How do I create an online assignment? - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

You would just type this in the box if you wanted students to only submit Word and PDF files: docx,pdf (no periods before the file names, and no spaces in the list...just a comma to separate file types)

But again, this process doesn't really work for Discussions in Canvas.  As you've stated, you may need to come up with very clear instructions on what file types you will accept if students are submitting things to you via a discussion topic.

Hope this helps a bit.

[lhughes]

@Chris_Hofer (thanks for the @ tip!):  I do know all about limiting file types.  That's not the issue.  The issue is that some attachments (of, seemingly, IDENTICAL, file types) open to be viewed in Canvas and some require me to download them to Word.  I cannot figure out why this happens.  

[Chris_Hofer]

@lhughes ...

Any chance that you could share a screenshot or two...or maybe record a short video of what is happening?  Just be sure to hide any student names/grades for privacy reasons.  Thanks!

[lhughes]

@Chris_Hofer 

Yes, I can. 🙂 

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

@lhughes ...

Thank you for sharing the short video.  (I think I'd now recommend that you remove that video from your response because it shows student names and grades...which is a privacy concern / FERPA.)

I think you hit the nail on the head at the end of your video when you noticed how the attachments are displayed differently.  For example, I logged into my own sandbox course, and then I went to the student view to post a reply to a discussion topic:

For the "Written Assignment Text Entry.docx" file (which you'll notice also has the arrow pointing down), this file was added within the Rich Content Editor (RCE) following the steps in this Guide:

How do I embed a document from Canvas into the Ric... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

For the "sample.docx" file (which does not have the arrow pointing down...but does have the words "Attached File:" before the file name), this was added to the same reply but following the steps in this Guide:

How do I attach a file to a discussion reply as a ... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

So...if you want to be able to view the attachments within Canvas in the future (and not have to download them so that you are needing to open them in MS Word), you're going to need to provide very detailed directions on how you want your students to attach their files...otherwise, you are going to continue to run into this issue.

Hope this will help a bit!  Good luck!

[lhughes]

Thanks, @Chris_Hofer.  This is a big help.  

[gzag]

I am having the same problem. Unable to preview my files which has never been an issue before. None of these answers have helped.

[NesrineBasheer]

The solution is in how you set up the assignment. Make sure you check "Media recording"
Ask studnets to upload their video/audio files via "Media recording" not "File upload".