PDF Bookmarks should work in Canvas Document Viewer on the Web

[DavidPearson]

I post many PDFs on Canvas for my students. Many of these have a large number of pages because they are things like lab manuals, lecture slides, copies of my lecture notes, collections of homework problems, etc. As such, I always include a table of contents in the book-like documents or a navigation sidebar on my lecture slides that allow one to click and instantly navigate to the appropriate place.

These bookmarks work in every PDF view I have ever tried (Adobe, Chrome's PDF viewer, Edge's PDF viewer, Okular, etc) but they do not work in the Canvas document viewer when looking at things on the web in a browser. They do work in the Android app, which makes this even more frustrating.

The Canvas document viewer should enable the use of bookmarks in the documents to make navigation of documents that contain them much easier. I'm surprised that this is not already a feature.

🔎 This idea has been archived. While this idea isn't open for comments, it is an important part of Instructure’s idea conversations and development process. Contributions like this are valuable as Instructure prioritizes work on new or existing features.

[KristinL]

Hi @DavidPearson -

Thanks for taking the time to share your Idea with the Community!

After collaborating with a member of our Support team, I think the best step from here would be to actually create a ticket and work with Support directly. There is a chance that this is a request, but there is also a chance that you've discovered a bug.

When you create your case with Canvas Support, please include examples of files where you see the issue. That would help Support and Engineering better diagnose the issue.

[KristinL]

Hi @DavidPearson -

I'm checking on this Idea! Were you able to collaborate with Support? If so, what did you learn?

We know life can get busy, yet if we don't hear from you by March 31, we will archive this thread so we can better focus on current requests. 

[DavidPearson]

Unfortunately, I have no way of contacting support. There is no link to do so for me on Canvas. If you have a way to contact them, here is a link to a PDF that has the issue described

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hetBZoqnc_lY63d4NNI_gnLWbuuO0UZ6/view?usp=sharing

Links to websites will open just fine, but the links from the table of contents to different areas of the document do not work. Any other PDF viewer that I have tried has no problem with those internal links/bookmarks.

[KristinL]

Hi @DavidPearson -

Do you have a link to the item within a page in Canvas? The link to the document itself is nice, but we need to be able to look at it in context with a content page.

If you're using a Free for Teachers account, Support may be limited. I'll see what I can do to help and determine what's going on.

[KristinL]

hi @DavidPearson -

It's been a bit since we've heard from you! Were you able to connect with Support so they can take a look at an embedded example? If so, what did you learn?

An update would be wonderful! If we don't hear from you by April 26, we will assume things are going well and we will archive this thread.