Consistent issue displaying powerpoints (and other formats). No actual solutions have be provided in previous requests

[CraigVD3]

This is a consistent issue with every class I have that uses powerpoint. Is canvas's stance to simply ignore the issue? That seems insane to be. Text completely overlaps each other and makes it near impossible to fully glean the information from classes if I miss a lecture. Every slide across multiple classes share the same issue, text is too large for the text box that its in and it doesn't scale properly when displayed on canvas. This issue is NOT solved. The "solution" is to not use your platform?? Why not fix it for every user? I double checked if its an issue with resolution or app scaling size and nothing helped the issue. Its consistently your platform. I HAVE to use this platform to complete my schooling. So do millions of other students. The universities don't provide an alternative. I've asked many classmates and they also experience the same issue.

Here's the "solutions" they provided before:

gnoack

Community Champion

 ‎12-29-2023 09:40 AM

Hi @LucasCrosbie 

I believe this is an issue with the preview generator in Canvas.  There isn't much you can do about if you want to use .pptx files. 

Some alternatives would be to export your PowerPoint as a PDF file and upload that file instead.  The only downside to this option is it will likely result in a file that is not accessible to screen readers. 

Another alternative would be to upload your file to office.com, Google Drive, or other online drive, then share the link to it in your course with the share setting set to "anyone with the link can view".  This has the downside that the file resides outside of your Canvas Course, and it is likely students can download it. 

There are a few other ways to export or share files, perhaps one of those would work for you. 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/export-a-presentation-6ee4272e-8f64-47f6-bd32-12fe50eef47...

[dbrace]

Hello @CraigVD3,

I understand the frustration. This challenge is something that I hear from users at my school (not all of them and only in more unique circumstances) when it comes to how Canvas displays previews of compatible files. This can happen for files that teachers upload to share with students and when students submit their assignments to their teachers.

What I can say is that this challenge is similar to what can also happen when other programs (or websites) such as Google's Drive/Slides, Google's Gmail, Apple's macOS, or Apple's iWork/Keynote try to either preview or fully open a Microsoft PowerPoint (or other file from within the Microsoft Office suite) file.  I have also seen situations when the web-based or online version of Microsoft PowerPoint could not properly display a Microsoft PowerPoint file.

While Microsoft PowerPoint files are mostly considered to be an "industry standard", there are times that other programs (or websites) are not able to properly display what is inside of them. This is something that also happens (not as much but it still does) with Adobe Acrobat PDF files (another "industry standard") when they are previewed or opened by something else other than the free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader or the paid-for version of Adobe Acrobat Professional.

I can only provide you with two recommendations:

1. download the Microsoft PowerPoint files and open them in Microsoft PowerPoint instead of relying on Canvas to preview them (I would recommend that you reach out to your school's IT Department and ask them for help on how you can obtain a copy of Microsoft Office because most - but not all - schools make it available to their students for free)
2. tell your teacher that you and your classmates are not able to preview the Microsoft PowerPoint files from inside of Canvas and ask that they upload a new version that does not have as much formatting

I know that neither option is ideal and not a "fix" or "solution" but they are the best that I can offer.

-Doug

[JeffCampbell]

I am curious, only because I have never seen this before. Can you share a screenshot or two of what this looks like on your end? One thing I noticed is that you mention the scaling and text box size. The PowerPoints I have in mine open full screen and do not display this issue. Any chance you can download the powerpoint and send it via DM? Also curious to test on my end to see if it replicates the issue.

[dbrace]

@JeffCampbell, they have already provided two screenshots.

-Doug

[JeffCampbell]

Thank you. I missed that.

[CraigVD3]

Hi Jeff,

Here's the powerpoint thats been an issue, but again it is consistent across many classes and different devices (canvas on mobile is especially bad at this and in general). I believe it's not an issue on a professors end and only seen by a student. I'm only assuming the issue is with scaling and text boxes. The issue seems to be consistently enlarged text that gets snipped when it reaches beyond the text box it was given. Even when I'm in lecture and following the slides on my computer, the powerpoints display incorrectly on my end but perfectly for the professor. I'm assuming however they've coded their display on canvas accidently enlarges all text by some factor. 

[dbrace]

Hi @CraigVD3,

Thank you for the PowerPoint file as an example.

While you have mentioned this is happening in many classes and on different devices, what is happening (at least in this case) is what I suspected. This is a mix of formatting and fonts (and possibly also transitions/animations) that were picked by your instructor.

Attached is a PDF file with 10 pictures/pages. The pictures/pages for 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 are screenshots from within Canvas and pictures/pages 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 are from within PowerPoint on a Mac.

While I did not provide screenshots of those same slides in Keynote on a Mac, I did open the file on a Mac and the first thing that Keynote told me was that fonts were missing and it wanted to know what I wanted to do about that. Please "Keynote fonts missing.pdf" file that I have attached.

In the  What types of files can I preview in Canvas? - Instructure Community - 617187  support article, Canvas does provide a list of fonts that are supported.

I agree with you that Canvas should provide better support but without including all (which is not realistic, or at least more) fonts, I am not sure what else they can do.

-Doug

[JeffCampbell]

I see this is doing it on my end too. I went a bit different route than what @dbrace did. It looks as if he may have found a viable reason for the issue worth testing. I noticed that it almost appears as if the slide width on yours is slightly wider than the slide width Canvas uses. I used slides 118 and 119 for testing, as a reference, since one of them is very similar to the picture you shared. I notice on 118 that the "the" at the end of the first line shifts down to the next line. On slide 119, the tale end of the subscripts on the far right get cut off. This made me start wondering how Canvas is interpreting the width of the slides as it was behaving as if the slide width was slightly smaller. This would cause the "the" to shift to the start of the next line and potentially cut off anything on the far right because the text box is too close to or at the edge of the slide. 

I tried playing with changing the slide size, but that would fix it in some areas and not in others. Your slides appear to be using a standard 4:3 aspect ratio. Switching to Widescreen 16:9 helped a lot in many spots, but it still left a few areas where it overlapped similar to how it shifted words at the end of one line down to the next. It could be that switching to Widescreen and adjusting some of the text box sizes could address those areas. But I'd suggest testing @dbrace 's suggestion of using a more standard font. That will possible require going through things slide by slide to correct any shifts due to a new font.

I noticed, much like the suggestion you originally received, that uploading to Google Drive and embedding eliminated the issue on my end. Not ideal, but you could put the file into Canvas, click on the link to access Link Options in order to disable the preview, then use Google Drive to embed a preview for students. 

You might look into submitting an idea thread about updating the list of accepted fonts if that ends up being the fix.

UPDATE: You mentioned it looking good on the professor's view, but not on yours. Is it possibly they are displaying the original PowerPoint on their computer rather than one hosted on Canvas? That would definitely explain the difference. 

[paul_fynn]

We have noted this as a general issue, but we also found a specific issue whereby our institutional 'Accessible Powerpoint Template' used a font (Railway) that wasn't recognised by Canvas preview, and hence when preview substitutes a font we see some distortion.

Our solution was to add the font into the current Accessible Powerpoint Template, which means that it is 'carried' into Canvas with the file. This does create a small size overhead, but seems to have reduced some of the complaints around this locally.