[Rich Content Editor] Paste Images into Canvas

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

I want the ability to paste images directly into Canvas from the clipboard. An example: I want to use Windows Snipping tool (or any other screenshot tool) to create an image. I then want to CTL-C to copy it and CTL-V to paste it into a quiz or assignment or content page in Canvas. Another example would be Copy-Pasting from a Word document into Canvas. This site is able to do it! I just did it below! Let's get this implemented in Canvas!

 

117878_pastedImage_1.png117878_pastedImage_1.png

Added to Theme

112 Comments
bciotti
Community Explorer

It would be nice to have the ability to directly paste an image (which has been copied and saved to the clipboard) directly into an announcement or discussion or page or assignment or quiz etc.  Gmail, Piazza, and various platforms have this and I use it constantly and would really appreciate the ability in Canvas.  Thank you. 

bogdanov
Community Novice

This functionality of pasting images from clipboard to Canvas is much needed and much overdue. It would save many hours for each developed course.

STEPHENANDERSON
Community Explorer

Can someone please explain why it causes an issue to paste rather than the same file being uploaded?  Teachers and students both need to be able to work efficiently. 3 more steps is too many. Please add this feature.

JohnPlatter
Community Member

How has this still not become a thing almost 6 years later? This is basic internet UX. It makes providing feedback to students SO much more difficult than it needs to be. 

DavidSchlater
Community Participant

We tell everyone that Canvas will be better than Blackboard....this is a must have feature for any modern web product. Let me put it another way - what if every email you wrote, and needed to put an image in, you could not use Grab or Snip or Jing to copy and paste in an image, had to save a file and then upload it to your email? Think about how bad that would be...

DougHolton
Community Member

The open source tinymce software library that Canvas uses to implement the rich content editor supports copying and pasting (and asynchronously uploading) images, although this plugin costs money:

https://www.tiny.cloud/docs/plugins/premium/powerpaste/ 

otherwise they could code their own solution building on the free paste plugin:

https://www.tiny.cloud/docs/plugins/opensource/paste/ 

That plugin converts images to base64 data in the html, but it can be converted and uploaded as image files with extra code:

https://www.tiny.cloud/docs/general-configuration-guide/upload-images/ 

https://www.tiny.cloud/docs-4x/advanced/handle-async-image-uploads/ 

 

 

LouisWoodhams
Community Member

I need this feature to be able to efficiently create content.  I do this in Piazza all the time and it works great.  Why can't we have this in Canvas?

wardex
Community Explorer

Please make this happen!!! I teach statistics and would love for my students to paste a graphic from their statistical software directly into the text box as they're writing. 

It's really a pain for them to have to save, upload, then insert, especially during a test. 

LouisaF
Community Member

This would be a very popular feature to introduce - and great if it included a prompt to insert an ALT tag for the pasted image.
Interesting that there are 98 comments but only 46 votes for this feature. I wonder if it would help if, apart from the starter post, the most recent posts were displayed first?
Technology has moved on from 2015 when the first posts were made - potential issues have been ironed out and this feature is now very common for a number of platforms. For eg. Microsoft Teams allows snips to be pasted into Teams Meeting chats and this is a great boon to free flowing information sharing and discussion.

richard_gardner
Community Participant

 

replying to the most recent post on this topic, April 20, 2022. Good to know. I may go back and vote for it, but I’ve discovered over the years that votes don’t really count at Canvas, in spite of their claims.