Course Deletion

[awwillingham]

I am an instructor, and a canvas course that I created with my supervisor was deleted. Can any troubleshooting help be done to recover the lost course?

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hi @awwillingham ...

The answer is a definite "maybe"?  This all has to do with timing.

Do you happen to know the Course ID of the course that was deleted?  The Course ID would be the number that appears in the URL of the course that was deleted.  For example:

https://SchoolName.instructure.com/courses/123456

If you don't know what that number is, there's a chance that your course may be located in your school's "test" or "beta" environment...assuming that you've had access to your course for at least a week or more.  These two Canvas environments are different than your school's "production" environment...which is the environment that you are typically logging in to on a daily basis.  I always make sure to tell people that once you are finished using the "test" or "beta" environment, log out of the environment so that you aren't getting confused as to which environment you're logged in to.  Here are some Guides:

• What is the Canvas test environment?
• What is the Canvas beta environment?
• What is the Canvas release schedule for beta, production, and test environments?
• How do I access the Canvas test environment as an instructor?
• How do I access the Canvas beta environment as an instructor?
• How do I log out of Canvas as an instructor?

If you find your course in either of these environments, it will have the same Course ID number that it had in "production".  Keep track of that number.

Next, your Canvas administrator will need to do something on his/her end that instructors do not have access to.  There's a way to restore courses that have been deleted by using the Course ID number you obtained from "test" or "beta".

• How do I restore a deleted course in an account?

Hopefully all this information will be helpful to you.  If you are unable to find your course in "test" or "beta", I recommend reaching out to Canvas Support.  No guarantees, but they may be able to do some magic on their end to find your course and get it restored for you.  How do I get help with Canvas as an instructor?

Good luck as you try these things out!  Keep us posted!

[JessicaDeanSVC]

Another tip for figuring out the Course ID number is talking to your Canvas admin and letting them know when you last worked on the course. They can then look at your Canvas history for that time and determine the course ID number from your history. You can also look at your own browser history to identify it as well!