The student's uploaded assignment is empty...Why?

[rebecca_asker]

Hi!

A student is having a strange issue; when she tries to upload a file in an assignment, the document becomes empty. This has happened to two different students. I don't understand why this happens or how to resolve the issue. The size of the files are 0MB, so there is no content whatsoever. The issue seems to occur in PDF-files, films and docx-files. 

Edit: when she sends the files to my regular e-mail they work just fine. So there is nothing wrong with the files themselves. 

Kind regards, 

Rebecca 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi  @rebecca_asker ...

Any chance that your students are using Internet Explorer or Edge as their web browser of choice?  If so, have they tried submitting the assignment to you via Chrome or Firefox (the preferred browsers) to see if the results are any different?

[rebecca_asker]

Good question! 

I'll make sure to ask her. We only teach distance courses, so we have very little control over which browsers the students use. Have you encountered this issue while using IE/Edge? 

[Chris_Hofer]

I have not encountered this issue.  I'm an admin for our school's Canvas instance, so I don't teach courses at our school.  However, it's common knowledge around here that Chrome/Firefox are much preferred over IE/Edge.  This is especially true for students when it comes time to submit their assignments to you.  So, make sure your students are using an up-to-date version of Chrome/Firefox.

[g_schriek]

Same here - whenever a student or teacher encounters problems, we ask them to clear the cache of their browsers, and to try again in an incognito window in Chrome or Firefox. Solves problems a lot of times...

[kacie_cleary]

This could be a long shot, but I've seen this happen before in Blackboard where a special character in the file name (in that case it was a hashtag) caused the submission file to be empty. Could you have the student resubmit in plain text?

[jsavage2]

9 times out of 10, this is it. Different OS have different sets of allowed characters in file names, and browsers for some reason seem to happily accept whatever the user names the file without and regard for whether other systems are likely to be able to deal with it. OS is probably the worst offender, since it will happily let you put a '/' in a file name, which it converts internally to something else, but passes a literal '/' to the browser. 

[rebecca_asker]

The student has sent me the documents via my e-mail, and I have been able to upload them onto Canvas masquerading as her. So there seems to be nothing wrong with the documents themselves. The mystery remains unsolved! 

[jsavage2]

That definitely sounds like a likely file name issue. Email servers and clients are much better about normalizing things than web servers. 

[rebecca_asker]

Thank you, Jay! 

Do you have any idea which characters the students need to avoid? What could make the file name faulty? 

[nschutz · Accepted solution]

Rebecca,

When it's not displayed in the Canvas previewer, typically it has to do with a corrupt file that Canvas can't convert and display. If the student emailed you file, are you able to masquerade as the student and submit the file? If so, the file is not corrupt and the problem might be related to the browser type/configuration. 

[rebecca_asker]

Thank you for your reply! 

The files are empty, even if I download them. They are 0Mb. When the student e-mails me the documents, they work fine, and I have resolved the issue temporarily by masquerading as her and uploading the files for her. So there seems to be nothing wrong with the documents themselves. 

[reenie_arnold]

How do you "masquerade" as a student? I do not have these privileges (I could only upload for myself as a student, to see the issue).

Thanks!

[rodger-ling]

I have a theory that the mysterious "blank document" may happen when students attach a document that is stored in the cloud rather than locally on their computer.  Typically you would sync the cloud to a folder on the computer so the document physically exists there, but it's also possible to have things stored only in the cloud and that may be related to this issue,.

[g_schriek]

Hi Rodger, that's an interesting theory. I'm not sure if our students work this way, but it may be a good thing to keep in mind when there is a case of blank document again.

Thanks for sharing!

[reenie_arnold]

I am sorry this is new to some, but there are students out there who submit blanks on purpose to buy more time. Not all, but enough (this is from the horse's mouth). Instead, have a "no-blank page" policy after teaching them (and making an assignment that show them how) to double-check their submissions. 

It's not fair to other students to let this slide.

[urbansk6]

It would be equally unfair to an innocent and hardworking student to assume that because they've done everything correctly, the technology should work correctly—there are frequently instances where we as instructors do everything right and something still gets messed up, so not extending that courtesy to students isn't fair either. The question is always what the truth is, and I think we should assume that OP is using best judgment in assessing the student's honesty.

[reenie_arnold]

Absolutely. I always work with the student to figure out the issue. 🙂

[jwbowles]

We also noticed this issue when students submit PDFs from Chromebooks, but I think this should work for PDFs created on any platform though. This was our solution:

1. Open the PDF in Google Chrome
2. Click on print
3. Change the printer destination/selection to Save as PDF
4. Save the PDF to your computer (preferably using a different file name to differentiate the two)
5. Submit the assignment through Canvas.

This should strip any extraneous data from the PDF and show up properly in the Doc Viewer!

[reenie_arnold]

That works, too-- many students are using Chromebooks at present.

Mainly, if a student is struggling with saving/uploading, we "Zoom it out" together, too. 🙂

[James]

@reenie_arnold 

Zoom is amazing for this kind of troubleshooting and it would save me a lot of typing, trying to guess what the problem the student is having.

Zoom is amazing in another way. I have found that almost every student who complains about technical difficulties being the reason they can't submit their assignment magically figures it out on their own after I make the offer to do a Zoom session with them. Very rarely do I actually need to do a zoom session.

[reenie_arnold]

Another rabbit, another hat. 😉

[reenie_arnold]

Boom. Different rabbit, different hat. 🙂

[sscanlan]

I have found a lot of the time if the student converts the file into a .pdf then uploads it - the content appears.

[GregSteele]

One of the current issues we are seeing with this is on the first attempt the submit button is becoming active just before the text field updates with the file details. Meaning the student hitting the button to quickly is submitting the loading wait tag that we see in the logs, the submission appears blank to instructors. Generally we can find the files in the student files area, except for media which is lost.