"Update Syllabus" erased my syllabus. Can I restore what I had written?

[samson]

I spent the morning creating a syllabus for a course. I walked away for an hour, came back and clicked "Update Syllabus," thinking it was the way to save what I'd written, but what I'd written disappeared. Is there any way to restore my syllabus information?

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @samson,

The "update syllabus" button would usually be the right way to save your changes.  It sounds like there was something in the back-end that perhaps times out during the hour you were gone, which is unfortunate and hopefully a rare case.  If this happens, you could try just reloading the edit page to see if you get a message about unsaved content and an option to reload it.  If that doesn't work, I think you'd unfortunately be out of luck though.

Sorry for the trouble you had, though I hope this suggestion may help.

-Chris

[PatriciaSeed]

Canvas overwrote some perfectly good HTML on the syllabus page and in the process deleted a major section of my syllabus. I added a non-breaking space before a table--and Canvas deleted everything from the  beginning of the non-breaking space through the next five lines--including the first two weeks of class. How do I get it back? In most HTML, you can simply go back through previous versions. 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @PatriciaSeed ...

In this case, I don't think the "undelete trick" found at Undeleting things in Canvas will help.  However, you *might be able to retrieve what you are looking for by logging in to your school's "test" or "beta" environments.  Normally, you log in to your school's "production" Canvas environment, but the "test" or "beta" environment might be helpful for you. You might be able to go to your course in either of these environments to see if the content you are looking for is still stored there.  Here is some information for you to look through:

• What is the Canvas test environment?
• What is the Canvas beta environment?
• How do I access the Canvas test environment as an instructor?
• How do I access the Canvas beta environment as an instructor?
• What is the Canvas release schedule for beta, production, and test environments?

I always recommend that, if you choose to look in either of these environments, you should log out of either of them before returning to your school's normal "production" environment.

• How do I log out of Canvas?

Hopefully this information will be of some help to you.  Sing out if you have any questions about this...thanks!