How do I back up my Canvas courses?

[jlivingston1]

How do I save and back up all of the content in my canvas courses?

[rpsimon · Accepted solution]

Hi  @jlivingston1 , here's the step by step guide to exporting your course.  You will download it from your course settings page into a file which you can save on your computer and/or upload into the cloud.  I personally would do both to make sure that I have a backup.

https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-12785-415241323

Another option for a backup would be to upload it to the Canvas Commons and set the accessibility of the course only to yourself.

https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-16712-how-do-i-use-commons 

Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

[CharlesEmmer]

Good info --- thank you! However, I have heard that one can back up one's courses from an institutional Canvas account (at one's university) to a personal Canvas account (this is especially important if one is moving from one university to another, or is back on the job market without an institutional account) --- can you provide information about that? (A detail: is there only a certain amount one can archive in a free personal account before one would have to pay for a subscription? I'm hoping the answer is no!)

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @CharlesEmmer ...

If you wanted, you could export your course (in a paid school environment) to a free account in Free For Teacher.  However, keep in mind that a Free For Teacher course has a limit of 500 MB per course, and you cannot change this limit.  This is detailed in this comparison chart:

Canvas free for teacher account comparison | Instructure

Here are the two Guides you'd need:

• How do I export a Canvas course? (use this to export your course from your paid Canvas environment)
• How do I import a Canvas course export package? (use this in your Free For Teacher course)

My understanding is that there is no option to subscribe to a paid Canvas environment for an individual.  Paid Canvas environments are designed for schools/businesses who wish to use Canvas as their LMS.

I hope this will help a bit.  Sing out if you have any other questions about this...thanks!

[Agusriudavets]

Hello, is there a way to do a backup of a whole sub-account, or account? For instance, we have a lot of courses so it would take a lot of time to do a backup of each course. 

Thank you very much for your help community!