didn't hit 'reply' before clicking 'next'

[AmyBardwell]

A student was typing up his response, but hit 'next' instead of 'reply' and now his entry is gone.  Any way to get it back?

[NoahBoswell · Accepted solution]

Hey, @AmyBardwell ..

It pretty much depends on the circumstance. Several times, especially if it's something like a discussion post or an assignment text submission, if the student navigates away and returns within a short amount of time, most times it will detect that there was already something typed in the submission, and it will ask if you'd like to re-add the existing content that Canvas identified from previous times your student has been on that page, and with what they've written.

However, there are also times where Canvas for some reason doesn't manage to save all of your student's work, and that's just the basic technology that we all know and love, and it will not be able to recover anything your student wrote for that assignment in that scenario. And unfortunately, that happens sometimes.

If you are using a tool such as the 'Chat' tool in your course, and your student was using that for his entry, to my knowledge and understanding you can't recover your entry if you navigate away from the page... but I could be wrong there. However, based off of what you've described, it appears your student was completing this in more of an assignment or discussion thread than using the chat feature (if thats even enabled for your school). 

So that being said, if your student went back to the assignment after clicking next and re-started the assignment and that pop-up box asking if he'd like to recover what he's written isn't there, then I'm sorry, but there's no way to really recover your students work, especially if there was no submission from him.

I hope this helps point you in the right direction, always feel more than welcome to reach out with any more questions or concerns you have about this topic, or any others!

Best,
Noah