[Modules] Publish / Unpublish ALL Option

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Instead of having to click every single item in a long list to Publish or Unpublish them all, it would save a lot of time if we had the option to "Publish All" or "Unpublish All". It would be even slicker if we could select or highlight a large group of multiple items (though not necessarily all of them) to publish or unpublish all at once.

Added to Theme

121 Comments
amy_koger
Community Explorer

Would love an 'unpublish/publish all' button at the top of each module.  It is painful to unpublish all  components in a module; especially since some of my unit modules have 30-40 items.  I like to have items for future days UNPUBLISHED and hidden from students at the top of my module.  This way, students see published work of the day at the top.  They have come to appreciate this system (along with me setting requirements so they get that symbol when complete) , so I continue to put in the time to do this.  I don't know why, but each time I copy over or import a module, the whole set is published.  An unpublish all button would be appreciated for this and also solve the gradebook issues mentioned previously.  

rjdporter
Community Member

Has there been any movement on this issue? This would be greatly appreciated!

dbradbury
Community Explorer

This is one of the most annoying shortcomings in Canvas. Publishing a module publishes everything, but unpublishing it does not unpublish all the content. I waste so much time after copying modules between courses laboriously unpublishing - with two clicks needed for files.

 

Does anybody at Instructure read these comments?

profesaalfeld
Community Member

I would love to see this feature. This is the first time I've fully copied a course from last year, and while the course copy feature works great, I have to go in and manually unpublish everything for four different classes. At a minimum, it would be great if unpublishing a module would unpublish everything in the module, especially since publishing a module results in publishing everything in the module.

JayParekh
Community Participant

Hope this feature gets added soon! Disappointing to see that this is still an idea since 2016.  

mhughesmarkovic
Community Member

We desperately need a way to publish or unpublish in bulk. 

It is incredibly time-consuming to have to unpublish every single thing in a module individually. It is mystifying as to why this isn't already a feature. It seems really basic, doesn't it?

It would be fantastic if we could (with a single click) complete all of the following:

a) publish everything in a module all at once [we can do this already]

b) unpublish everything in a module all at once

c) publish or unpublish a selection of items in a module in batches

RCV14
Community Member

It's a little disheartening that people have been requesting this feature since 2016, but I'm adding yet another vote for this feature.  Copying assignments from the Sandbox to a new year's course has been an unnecessary hassle because just unpublishing the modules does not unpublish the assignments in other parts of the course.  I got a lot of students in the first week asking me about all these late assignments they had.  If they were using the app, they could see all of my assignments, and it was holding them to last year's due dates.  Unpublishing each assignment was tedious and unnecessary.

KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: In Development
  Comments from Instructure

 

This feature is currently In Development! Continue to follow this thread for updates.

KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
  Comments from Instructure

 

For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2023-06-17) 

NoahBoswell1
Community Champion
Problem statement:

Restrict all buttons underneath a module from being published automatically all at once when a teacher/instructor published a module. Currently, when you click the publish button on a module header, every button underneath it turns green and has the checkmarks showing that it's published.

Proposed solution:

This should be removed because it is very, very annoying, especially when I may have 30 buttons under a specific module, to go in and figure out which ones I need locked, if not all of them, then manually click the buttons myself and un-publish them. There have been several, several times where I would accidentally leave a button unlocked that should've been locked (or unpublished), and there would be a lot of confusion between myself, my students, parents (observers), and the paraprofessionals inside my classroom, about what needed completed, along with why student's weren't getting the right grades. Students would end up submitting an assignment somewhere else, or would complete the wrong assignment without realizing, and I fully understand why. So that has caused a lot of unnecessary issues in the past and it would be great if that could be removed. While there is a schedule for publication option for buttons such as pages, which should also have a schedule for un-publication option in the future, not all assignments have that and that feature should also NOT be the only feature we have to use. I feel that instructors should be able to go in, publish the buttons they want ahead of time before they unlock the module, then when they unlock the module on a specific date, only the buttons below that module that were published will appear, and it will not unlock everything. Please take this into consideration, I'm sure several other instructors have gone through the same, if not similar issues. I know some of my co-workers have, as it has been a discussion before. Thank you.

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