Why doesn’t Canvas Inbox have a trash/delete folder??

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jamathomas
Community Novice

Canvas inbox has no delete/trash folder. Why is that? I need to recover a conversation that was mistakenly deleted. Unfortunately, when I went to search for the deleted thread of messages. I noticed that there was no trash box. How can I retrieve lost information, whilst also maintaining a balance mailbox? I would like to delete threads that aren’t needed, but also like to have the option of reviewing deleted threads and moving them to my inbox if needed. I need to retrieve a thread of messages. Is that possible? 

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James
Community Champion

@jamathomas 

Canvas designs for the uses of the masses and most people don't need to recover a deleted message.

Moving forward, a better way to manage your emails might be to archive the messages rather than delete them. Canvas designed that for people wanting to remove the messages from the inbox but leave them in the system.

Now, what can we do about restoring the messages?

Very little is ever actually deleted, it is usually just marked as deleted and hidden from the normal user. There is no Canvas REST API support for restoring deleted messages, either, so it is not functionality that is available but just not exposed through the web. Once it's deleted, it cannot be edited or viewed.

There are some things that can be done by Canvas support on the back-end to change the database and restore deleted content. You would need to contact your local Canvas admin to initiate that. Some schools have limited support, so that may not be an option they want to pursue, especially given the other options listed below that you should attempt first.

When you delete a message, there is a pop-up that says "Are you sure you want to delete your copy of this conversation? This action cannot be undone." As final as that sounds for your inbox, there is hope in there. It states that you are are deleting only your view of the message. That means that there is a possibility that the message still exists somewhere else, just not inside the your Canvas Inbox. A Canvas Administrator might be able to find that message if you know who the other parties were.

Depending on your settings and who created the message, you may have received a copy of it in your email. Email does often have a trash folder and some institutions archive messages for a very long time to meet compliance requirements.

Depending on when the message was created, it still may be available within your beta and/or test instances of Canvas. The beta instance is updated every weekend, so if the message was there last week, there's a chance you can recover the content of it. The test instance is updated when the production release happens, which was January 16. If your message was created and deleted this week, then this option won't be available to you.

If your institution uses Canvas Data, then the person in charge of that may be able to recover the message from there. There an 18-36 hour delay between before Canvas Data is updated. Finding it is not a trivial task, so I wouldn't ask for it if there are other ways to recover the message.

Note that finding the message inside another user's account, your email, Canvas Data, or within the beta or test instance isn't the same as restoring it to the main inbox. It will let you get the content of the message, though. If you're going to use the beta instance route, you typically only have until Friday to get the content as it will be overwritten each week with the current state, which is has the message deleted.

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