Problems with Word Doc Formatting?

[cgurysh]

Has anyone experienced issues with formatting changing in a Word Document upload to an assignment. We have had the formatting change not only in the Croc Doc view but also when downloading the file submission?

[washingt · Accepted solution]

I had to create a PDF to solve the problem.

[sbartholomew]

Hi Cara - I have not heard of this before.  Please send me an email with an example and I will look into it for you.

[JamieWills]

This is still very much a frustrating issue. I, too, just watched a student submit an essay from Office 365 Word Online to a Canvas assignment, and all the indenting and the centering of the title was lost. This needs to be addressed! Students are having points taken off by teachers for poor MLA, but in fact, the MLA was done perfectly. Please, Canvas, address this.

Jamie Wills

Cherokee County School District

Canton, GA

[pwalsh]

I have only ever had a real problem with the Crocodoc formatting. Once I download the file the formatting seems to be as intended. In my business class formatting is important, and I download anything that doesn't look right before I grade it just to be sure.

When the formatting's a problem with the download it's usually because I'm grading on a computer running a different version of Office than what the student used to submit the file. I can't really blame that on Canvas, though.

[tzook]

I have had both. It seemed to stem from students using an older version of Word, or using software other than Word (Open Office, or Pages) and saving their document as a .doc

I tended to only notice the issues when students had highly formatted documents, like equations or tables.

Never found a solution for the older software issue. I started using Google Docs and had students submit URLs. If you can get past the potential "cheating" issues with late alterations, it may work better.

[mandren_kreps · Accepted solution]

I have also experienced this. I watched a student submit an office 365 word document. The document had every paragraph indented but after submitting all the indentions went away. I also had a student come to me and say she submitted a document from office 365 that was double spaced but after submitting it, it was only single spaced. I did not witness this one. The only work around that I have found is downloading the 365 online doc to the desktop version of word...fixing the formatting, saving and uploading into canvas. Any guidance would be welcomed. 

[rnewton5]

I noticed the same problem when students submitted an office 365 word document. Their paragraphs were indented, but the indentations went away once it was submitted on Canvas through the Office 365 tab.

The workaround, downloading the document from Office 365 and re-uploading, is an extra step that negates the utility of allowing students to upload directly from Office 365.

Any advice on how to fix this problem between Office 365 and Canvas?

[CASSIEBROUSSARD]

This issue has been marked as solved, but I don't see where Canvas offered a solution to these formatting issues. Has this been solved? Thanks!

[JenniferFoster1]

I too am experiencing this issue with students' MLA formatted essays. I see them on their computers properly formatted, but everything changes when uploaded to Canvas. Be it indents, Headers, font, or line spacing. Please help me understand how to correct this issue. I grade on formatting, and I clearly cannot. I did not have this issue last semester - same assignment. 

[washingt · Accepted solution]

I had to create a PDF to solve the problem.

[CASSIEBROUSSARD]

I am also seeing this issue and when I grade student essays for formatting, it is a real problem. The idea that students need to download a PDF before they submit, as someone else suggested, is not a real solution. Although, I do appreciate that workaround.

I'm going to ask again a year later, has anyone found a solution for this issue between Office 365 and Canvas?

[MeganSporleder]

How do I create a PDF? I've been having this exact same issue and it is driving me insane!!

[rnewton5]

In Word, click "Save as," and change the File Format drop-down box from "Word Document (.docx)" to PDF.

In Word Online, click on the File tab, then Export, then "Download as PDF."

Here's a YouTube tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y-GeTi472A

[MeganSporleder]

Awesome, thank you so much! (:

[rnewton5]

This is a helpful workaround, but it does not solve the problem with the Microsoft 365 Word to Canvas integration issue. One downside of saving to a PDF is that we lose access to the file metadata. For example, we cannot see how long someone was working on the document. 

[rhaught]

The issue is occurring still as had students and instructors report that formatting is being changed in the upload plus remains when the instructor downloads the file. Besides downloading the doc to a device and formatting there or downloading as a PDF then uploading has there been any discussion on fixing the issue?

[jvoelker]

Yes, I had students share with me yesterday that they are encountering these same problems. One was working from an online version of Word, another from Office 365, and another from the Word app on their computer. They were extremely frustrated, particularly since the format of their documents is important for this class where we are working on resumes and cover letters. Additional support and correction of these issues from Canvas would be extremely helpful.

[paul_fynn]

@sbartholomew

I can see that you were going to look at this back in 2016, and that we are still getting reports of this over the last few months.

We have just had a two cases where students uploaded word dissertations to Canvas and, on reviewing their submissions, then found that there were minor distortions between their computer originals and the Canvas version. 

Could you please advise

• what is the extent of this as a 'known issue' ?
• what are the typical distortions / features associated with the issue ?
• will those distortions be experienced by both students and teachers ?
• does that distortion impact only the view of the word document, or does it impact the downloaded word document ?
• how can we check one against the other if the workaround appears to be to print a pdf version ?

We look forwards to your thoughts on what is an important issue for us ....

[celiaecc]

Hello - We also had this issue come up over the weekend. The students are using APA format for their papers, getting docked points for the page numbers showing on the left in Speedgrader, but when the instructor downloads the document, it shows correctly formatted on the right. After some testing of my own, I found that it seems to be affecting Mac users who are using O365. I tested a Windows user and MS Online but those didn't seem to have an issue with the page number format changing, and this is only affecting page numbers in my testing. What I found as a work around for now, is to have the students save as a .doc file type and upload. The formatting then seems to stick but I don't believe this is a solution, just a band-aid. It would be helpful if this can be investigated further for an actual fix. 

[JessicaLouise]

I am having the same issue. I'm using the latest version of Windows and MS Word and when I upload a document, it changes the formatting, sometimes just slightly and sometimes quite a bit.  I had a resume assignment that uploaded differently than it should have and made me look like I had no idea what I was doing... I see that this issue has been going on since at least 2016. Super frustrating!! I also had an APA reference page that was on a separate page but when I uploaded it, the reference page had been split into 2 pages, with half of it on the last page of my paper and the other half on the actual reference page.  So... from some of the replies, it looks like I need to make it a pdf and then upload?? I guess I'll try that, but it would be awesome if Canvas could fix this issue!!

[paul_fynn]

The issue here is whether the students submit what amounts to a scanned pdf or a machine readable pdf, which seems to be random based on the process used to generate it.

This has potential accessibility issues for graders using assistive software, and potential compatibility issues with plagiarism checkers ?

[Asgeir_Valur]

The way I see it, the tech companies dislike exams and homework, they dislike students being pushed. Online platforms are constantly changing to make it harder and harder for students to submit things. Documents once meant to be submitted for grading are changed to make it harder and harder to grade them. This shift is not going away. Its the future. Things which these students should treat as private rather than public and only publish if they really need to. Homework is unpopular in Silicon Valley and elsewhere where things computers and internet reign. The reason for why these tech companies are making assignments and exams so hard to submit is to embrace the shift from homework to no homework at all, from exam to no exam at all, so education will no longer be associated with needless stress. The aim behind that is productivity. The fewer assignments students submit, the less homework they do, the more they learn because they have more time to learn. That means the more productive they are. So in the end, the shift from assignments, exams and homework to no assignments, no exams and no homework is all about convenience and productivity.

[Asgeir_Valur]

The best assignments using Canvas or Moodle have all been videos in my experience. Attempts to submit assignments in Word format usually turn out to be futile. To me, the best place to look to when submitting an academic paper, is Outlook. The student sends the teacher the paper as a Word document, then the teacher receives the paper or assignment through Outlook. Canvas, Moodle and similar things should not be used for submitting other assignments than video essays. Outlook is irreplacable since there is no other alternative to it which works as well. What Canvas and Moodle are good at, is allowing students and teachers to enjoy a good viewing experience.