How do I clean up the Canvas Calendar and To-Do List?

[hbrown5018]

I have a faculty member who has asked this question and provided the following information:

I have assignments from 2020 that keep popping up on my calendar and to-do list. There are enough of these that I need a quick way to get rid of the outdated entries (without having to remove them one-by-one).

My thought is they've done several course copies and have not deleted any old assignments or to-do's from the previous course copies? 

Thank you for your assistance! Heather  

[ColtonSwapp · Accepted solution]

Hello @hbrown5018 

Thanks for posting this in the Global Canvas Community. 

The only way I know of is to do this one by one. Unfortunately, I did not see that there is not a bulk edit option for Calendar items. 

One work around I have found is to pull up the syllabus page and look at the Course Summary. The course summary should show any assignments, quizzes, discussions, and events that are set up in the course. When you click on the item, it should take you to the area where the item is setup and you can delete any unwanted items. 

This might be a little off topic, but If they are seeing assignments, quizzes, and discussions with old 2020 dates, there is a way to bulk edit the due dates. This comes in handy if they plan on using some of the content, but wish to reconfigure the dates for their current year. HERE is a guide on how to do that. 

It does sound like the items are being imported from the old course from 2020. One way I have found to avoid this is to select the Adjust Events and Due Dates option before they do the import. They can either choose the option to Shift Dates, or Remove Dates. HERE is the Canvas guide that goes over that information. 

Hopefully this helps! 

-Colton 

[lbranen-ahumada]

Just one additional comment - I chose to adjust dates when I imported from a course from an earlier semester, but that didn't affect the availability of announcements or anything I had put on the student's To-do list. So those had to be changed one by one, which was quite a pain, so in the future, I will use the option of putting items on the To-do list sparingly. I am not sure they pay attention to that anyway - that's my impression anyway.

[hbrown5018]

Thanks so much Colton! I really appreciate your feedback. I'm thinking the faculty member needs to do a little house (aka course) cleaning! 🙂 Heather 

[JTURNERATMPC]

I am not sure there needs to be a "house cleaning."  I am fairly organized and detail-oriented.  I am experiencing this issue of scheduled Zoom meetings from my 2023 course rolling over into my 2024 course.  It is confusing my 2024 students.  When I go to the 2023 version of the course, the to-do calendar and Zoom schedule is blank.  No upcoming events or meetings. Resetting the 2024 course and deleting the 2023 Zoom schedule wouldn't solve this problem.  The 2023 course is properly concluded and inactive.  Nonetheless, phantom Zoom meetings are populating on my 2024 to-do calendar.  I would also like a bulk edit/delete function, but it does not exist.  Perhaps Instructure needs to do some "cleaning?"  Cheers!  

[nicole_jobin]

This is also an issue with what our university calls community pages - or canvas pages used for a program or group rather than just for a course. Community pages often last for multiple semesters at a time. It would be great if there was a way to bulk delete items off of the calendar for group pages like this. The current academic year doesn't really need to see calendar events dating back to when the community canvas page was started. But the rest of the page including past discussions does need to stay active and continuous so just deleting and starting over isn't an option.

Thanks