Internal PDF Links (Bookmarks) Do Not Work in Canvas PDF Viewer

[DavidPearson]

There seems to be an old thread about this, but the issue is still persistent.

I have some PDFs that I post on Canvas that are quite long (lecture notes that are in an almost textbook-like format, a "book" of homework problems I have written, and lab manuals). These all have a table of contents that has internal links, or bookmarks, to the various sections to make it easier for students to navigate. The idea is they can look at the table of contents, click on a chapter/section title and the viewer automatically scrolls to that location in the body of the document. However, the Canvas PDF viewer has never allowed these links to work.

The links do work in Adobe Acrobat Reader, Google Chrome's PDF viewer, Microsoft Edge's PDF viewer, and Okular, an open-source PDF viewer, so the problem is unique to Canvas and is likely a bug, though maybe Instructure considers it a "feature."

Has anyone ever been able to get bookmarks to work in a PDF on Canvas? Is there a way to report issues directly instead of just posting on the community forum? A Google search suggests there should be a "report a problem" link in the Canvas Help menu, but I only find links to the community forum or feature requests.

[DavidPearson]

To clarify, the internal links/bookmarks do not work in the web-version of Canvas. They do work in the Android app. Really seems like a bug or a missing feature that should be added as soon as possible.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello there, @DavidPearson ...

While I am not totally sure of a question for you, I thought I would respond.  I wonder if your Canvas administrators at Pittsburgh State University chose to remove some of the links within the "Help" menu of your Canvas environment...including the one to "report a problem"?  We here in the Community wouldn't be able to know that for sure since we don't have access to your school's Canvas environment.  I think the best thing for you to do would be to reach out to your school's Center for Teaching and Learning to see if the staff there could be of more help.  (I'm not sure how your school handles Canvas tech support...so that is why I am suggesting this route.)  I navigated around your school's website a bit, and I found the following pages for your reference:

• Canvas and Tools Integrated Within Canvas
• Canvas (pittstate.edu)

Hopefully these links will be of some help to you.  Sing out if you have any questions about the above...thanks!  Take care, and be well.

[aearhart]

Almost two years later! Here I am to swoop in and provide a potential solution! But not the one you were hoping for... sorry.

Just stumbled on this problem and we're trying to decide whether we should disable preview for pdf files that have internal links/bookmarks. Doesn't fix the problem but it does make it go away at the cost of some functionality.

Most of our pdf files are external to Canvas. We put them in a Google Drive folder and then make public links to them from within Canvas. They open in a new tab/window and the internal links/bookmarks work. Works well for us and looks nice.

If it's a major issue for you and you really need the bookmarks, perhaps bypassing Canvas and putting them in a Google Drive folder is a reasonable solution.

[Monica_Munoz]

Thank you for this. I just helped a faculty who had this same issue and I came across your post and suggested she use OneDrive to link her PDFs inside of Canvas. I know the original post was from 2022 but she insisted that the links used to work in the preview window last semester (Fall 2024) but I am not sure that is the case. I am wondering if this is an accessibility issue and if removing the PDF preview would be helpful as people would not longer think something is "broken". Thanks for your suggestions! 

[fiona_chinn]

Hi, is there any update to this? It's really frustating having to explain to people each year that they just don't work in PDFs within Canvas, so would love to hear if there's a way to fix it!

We need the files to be uploaded in Canvas itself, so can't just link out to Google Drive etc.

[DavidPearson]

I think the Instructure team just doesn't care about fixing this obvious bug. My campus' local support just suggested telling students to download the file. I tried working with Instructure directly to get it fixed, sending them some of the PDFs I have with internal bookmarks, but they wanted access to one of my courses, which I didn't have the authority to give. So they closed the bug instead of just looking at things in a test course on their end where they could have easily reproduced the bug.