WHY doesn't Canvas auto-save unsaved quiz questions?

[akerr1]

Surely I'm not the only person who has had that problem: when you're writing a quiz question in Canvas but forget to click the "Save" button for that particular question, the question disappears without a trace when you "Save" or "Save and Publish" the entire quiz.

This is MADDENING. I have lost so much work and wasted so much time this way!

Even more confusing is when you're writing a quiz question with "Answer Comments." Those answer comments have to be saved separately from the question itself. If you save the Answer Comments but then forget to save the quiz question itself, then the whole question (including the answer comments) disappears. Or, if you save the quiz question but not the answer comments, then the answer comments disappear. 

That means you have to save three times in the exact right order - from the inside out -  or you lose your work as a result of your attempt to save your work:
1. You must first save the Answer Comments.
2. Then, you must save the quiz question itself.
3. Finally, then and only then, can you save the whole quiz. 

Please, please, please stop this madness. Saving the quiz should also save any unsaved quiz questions and answer comments. At least, please save them as a draft or something! 

Or, if for some reason that is impossible, then at LEAST add a warning - "You have unsaved content; are you sure you want to navigate away"? That would be so easy to add and would prevent so many headaches! Canvas already does this for navigating away from unsaved Assignment Comments, which are generally much shorter and represent much less effort than an entire quiz question.

Sincerely,
A repeatedly frustrated instructor who just lost 20 minutes of work 😞

[Chris_Hofer]

@akerr1 ...

Based on your above comments, it sounds like you are currently using the Classic Quizzes interface to design your quiz questions.  Do you know if your school has looked at and/or is using New Quizzes?  You may or may not know, but there really isn't any further work being done on Classic Quizzes.  Rather, Instructure (the folks that make Canvas) are focusing their efforts on the newer quiz interface, New Quizzes.  In New Quizzes, the interface is quite different, and there isn't the need to make sure you're always saving at different spots while editing.  When designing a question in New Quizzes, there is a "Done" button to press once you've written/edited the question, but there isn't a further option to "Save" the quiz...as it should auto-save for you.

I would suggest you reach out to your school's Online Learning / eLearning / Distance Learning team and have a conversation with them about New Quizzes.  They may already have it enabled at your school, or they may have plans to enable it in the near future.  But, that would be a question for you to ask that team.  They should be able to give you more information on what their plan is with New Quizzes.

I've provided a link to a video tutorial for you to watch if you'd like to learn more about New Quizzes.

New Quizzes Overview (Instructors)

I hope this will be of some help to you.  Good luck as you have these conversations at your school!

[LisaKrohn1]

I am beside myself about this same problem!

[CraigDuncan]

I just lost 20 minutes of work for this same reason. (I clicked SAVE for the whole quiz, rather than the save button for the specific question I had been working on.) It's mind-boggling to me that the Canvas doesn't auto-save (as the OP suggests). At the very least, in this situation Canvas ought to ask you "You have unsaved changes to a question which will be lost if you proceed. Are you sure you wish to proceed?"

I'm glad this problem apparently won't exist in New Quizzes. My understanding (from chatting with Canvas help line people) has been that New Quizzes are still a bit "beta" rather than fully ready to wheel out. So I've been sticking with Classic. But maybe I need to give New Quizzes a try.

Still, you can find complaint threads about this problem from 10 years ago. It should have been fixed a LONG time ago. Grrr.