Images Disappearing in quizzes

[mary_klinger]

I'm having trouble with images disappearing in quizzes in canvas.  My students use Chromebooks and most of them can see the images but one or two can't.  I have gone to files and published them individually and they are still not showing up on their Chromebooks. I have cleared the cache and cookies on their Chromebooks and that doesn't seem to help either.  Is there something that can be done to make these images re-appear?

[ericwerth · Accepted solution]

Hi  @BStutzman   Images disappearing in Canvas has come up in questions a number of times, such as here Embedded Pictures Disappearing.  One resource you might find useful linked in this question is this related blog, Images Not Showing Up in Canvas? Here’s What You Can Do 

I'm not sure if this is what you or  @mary_klinger  have run into, but the suggestions in the blog may be worth investigating.  Otherwise, you may want to contact Canvas Support as well and report the issue.  There may be an open ticket that you could be added to or Support may have some insight into what is happening.  Please let us know if you discover a fix!

All the best---

[ericwerth]

Hi  @mary_klinger and welcome to the Community!  I haven't personally experienced this, but hopefully someone reading this has and knows what could be causing the issue.  I do know that at my institution, strange problems arise from time-to-time if connection to wireless slows down.  You might consider contacting Canvas Support about this problem as well as posting to the Community.  Support could look into the issue for your class specifically or let you know if this is something others have reported as well.

I hope you find a solution soon, and if you do hear from Support please let me know what was causing the problem in case someone at my institution has this happen to them as well!

[BStutzman]

We are also experiencing this issue in Firefox and Chrome.  Are there any updates for the potential fix?

[ericwerth · Accepted solution]

Hi  @BStutzman   Images disappearing in Canvas has come up in questions a number of times, such as here Embedded Pictures Disappearing.  One resource you might find useful linked in this question is this related blog, Images Not Showing Up in Canvas? Here’s What You Can Do 

I'm not sure if this is what you or  @mary_klinger  have run into, but the suggestions in the blog may be worth investigating.  Otherwise, you may want to contact Canvas Support as well and report the issue.  There may be an open ticket that you could be added to or Support may have some insight into what is happening.  Please let us know if you discover a fix!

All the best---

[lsmith129]

 This is the link given for the "solution"

https://community.canvaslms.com/migration-blogpost/3778

As of March 2022 it's not working - "page not found"

[Chris_Hofer]

@lsmith129 ...

If you scroll to the very bottom of this topic [or just click this link: Solved: Re: Images Disappearing in quizzes - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)], you'll see that I provided an explanation of why some links don't work like they should.  I've provided updated links in my response.

[ericwerth]

Hi  @mary_klinger and  @BStutzman .  There hasn't been a post to this thread for a while so I thought I would check in and see if the problem with disappearing images still exists or if the issue has been resolved.

Thanks for the update and best wishes!

[mary_klinger]

Hi Eric,

Thanks for checking.

The problem is still there,but it's not very consistent. Sometimes only

one or two of my students have the problem, but the others can see the

image just fine. Sometimes the link is broken, and sometimes I just have

delete the space where it was and re-embed it.

I don't know if this helps or not - but it's an update.

~Mary

[ericwerth]

Thanks for the update  @mary_klinger !  Considering this I am going to go ahead and mark this as "assumed answered".  This can be changed if needed and marking the question as assumed answered doesn't prevent continued discussion in the thread.

All the best---

[lsmith129]

Why is this assumed answered? I don't see any solution.

[TomH1]

How can this be considered answered??

[mrizzuto · Accepted solution]

This was happening in a professor's course this week. She imported an entire course from 2017 into 2019. The instructor preview shows all embedded quiz images without issue. Students could only see the giant lock image. I was able to replicate the issue with a student test user. I removed the images and uploaded duplicates and that was the only fix that seemed to work.

All images were published and none were restricted from student vie. It was quite bizarre.

[hmjackson90]

I'm having a similar issue. Starting today, suddenly certain images that were displaying just fine have vanished. Some pages are affected, others not. In a quiz my students are taking this week, two images disappeared, while most remained intact. 

I've checked, and the images are published/not restricted from student view. I've tried deleting the images from my Canvas files, re-uploading them, and re-embedding them. No success. 

The weirdest thing about this is that when I go into the pages or quiz questions to edit, the images are there! Then as soon as I save and preview the final product, the images are again invisible. 

One student who took the quiz told me the images were invisible during testing, then appeared in her feedback/auto-graded quiz after she submitted.

I've filed a ticket to request help from Support...hope they can help. I'll update here if they do.

[hmjackson90]

Update: I was using Chrome earlier. (I've used Chrome and Canvas together with success for two years...until now.) 

Just tried opening Canvas in Microsoft Edge and now the images are back!!! (I did have to load the quiz three times though for all images to display correctly.) 

[john_ricken]

Hannah,

Have you found a reliable solution to this problem yet? We've been using Canvas for 7 years now and this does seem to be a very sporadic issue...

Thanks for any help,

John

[hmjackson90]

Actually, I haven't experienced this issue again since my previous post. Occasionally, one student will have an issue with an image not loading--I assume this has something to do with their browser or internet connectivity, since it doesn't happen for the rest of the class. I've advised them to re-load their browser when this occurs.

Not sure if this helps with the issue discussed elsewhere in this thread, however, which seems to be more "systemic."

[mary_klinger]

So, I'm still having trouble with images.  Just yesterday, one of my students didn't have the images.  I asked my tech ed person and he tried out the test in student view, in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.  Only Chrome showed the images and he said something about clearing the cache/history/cookies.  Not really sure what he meant, but maybe this can help someone.

[dave_otway]

I am getting this happen randomly and I’m just about to set an end of year final mcq for 600 1st year students. Why do the images sometimes not show ??? And how do we fix it? My work around has been to send the student images via MS teams as they do the quiz but this could get troublesome. Please help. 

[sullivan]

As was mentioned in the blog referenced above, image file size is a potential contributing factor, especially if the internet connection is slow. As far as I can determine from the Canvas rich content editor (clicking on the image and then the embed image icon), Canvas displays quiz images at around 700 pixels in width, regardless of the original resolution of the image. Therefore, it would seem that there is no need to use an image whose resolution (and resulting file size) is greater than 700 pixels. Does this make sense from the standpoint of digital image technology? I've inserted a single image into a Canvas quiz at 4 different resolutions (from 1327x978 pixels, 683 kb to 700x513 pixels, 119 kb), and I can't see any difference. On the other hand, a Canvas agent stated in a live chat that he could see a significant difference in a 1200-pixel width image versus an 800 pixel image in the quiz and that a 683 kb image should download easily on any internet connection. Nevertheless, one student (out of 50) taking a Canvas quiz today, using Chrome, encountered 2 blank images, both of which were smaller than that file size. I am wondering whether it is worthwhile to reduce all of my quiz images to 700 pixels and as a result to a more manageable file size (easily done with Paint), or if this will just result in degraded quiz images with the same viewing problem as before.

[davidcoleman]

Clearly losers are in charge of updating Canvas. This is a problem since 2015 and absolutely crucial. I had to invalidate THREE exam questions today on a major exam. Heartless that this has still not been fixed.

[lsmith129]

Same issue! Sometimes it happens when a student uses Safari or Explorer but not always. Really need an answer to this.

[kimberly_smith1]

A serious problem - and still no fix. Canvas keeps insisting it is a user issue. In my case, students can see the quiz answers based on the image name. An honest student sent me this image. 

[LindsayAbraham]

Still an issue in 12/2020!

[kimberly_smith1]

Still an issue 02/2021. At student send this image below after her exam today. At least it seems students may no longer be able to see the image file name? I guess that's something. 

[TomH1]

This is still an issue. Out of a group of 50 students, 3 could not see an image in the quiz. This is completely unacceptable. Especially considering that this issue has been known for years.

[rahepler_admin]

I am also still experiencing this issue as well. The issue is sporadic/not regular and images were uploaded, added to the files section and embedded in the quiz correctly. The JPG image is shown as a broken image with image title and in looking at the HTML it is referring back to the correct course and correct file item.

Has there been a specific cause identified for this at this time?  

[lsmith129]

Still having this problem in summer 2021. Sporadic and does not seem to be related to connection speed or image size. 

[bengalbus]

We have faculty having this issue here in fall of 2021. It seems to be with mainly with Chromebooks and at least one student yesterday with a macbook air using Safari 14.1. 

[JenneyTimothy]

Students on smartphones and some with laptops had this issue in my class today. This issue is NOT resolved. The link to the blog at the top of the thread is also bad. "No such page" appears when I click on it. 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @JenneyTimothy ...

Sometimes you'll find that links to other content may not work here in the Community.  This is because back in August 2020, Instructure migrated to a new Canvas Community platform.  While most things do re-direct to the correct place, there are times that you run into link errors as you've described.  The nice thing is that if you know the name of the link, you can usually use the search field at the top of Community pages to search for that name, and you'll probably find what you are looking for.  So, here are the current links for what you are looking for:

• Solved: Embedded Pictures Disappearing - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)
• Images Not Showing Up in Canvas? Here’s What You C... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

Hopefully these resources will be of help to you.  Sing out if you have questions...thanks!