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I cant preview PDFs in my browser. They were working but it has been like this for a couple weeks now
Tried on macOS and windows 10
Chrome Version: 81.0.4044.129 (Official Build) (64-bit)
It works fine on Firefox
I also cant seem to report a porblem anywhere on canvas
Pls fix cos its annoying
Solved! Go to Solution.
Hi, @7671903 Welcome to the Canvas Community! Yes, that is definitely something you'll want to report to Canvas Support. Based on the email address associated with your profile, I clicked on the Help link in Swinburne's global navigation menu and found several links to Canvas Support, including chat and phone options in addition to Report a Problem. Swinburne's Help menu also includes a link to a Canvas Support for Students course, and instructions for contacting Support via phone are in the first module of that course.
Hope this helps, Jackson.
Hi, @7671903 Welcome to the Canvas Community! Yes, that is definitely something you'll want to report to Canvas Support. Based on the email address associated with your profile, I clicked on the Help link in Swinburne's global navigation menu and found several links to Canvas Support, including chat and phone options in addition to Report a Problem. Swinburne's Help menu also includes a link to a Canvas Support for Students course, and instructions for contacting Support via phone are in the first module of that course.
Hope this helps, Jackson.
I'm having a similar problem. I'm an instructor, and I've been building a course with PDFs embedded. I was using the "auto preview" feature and decided to turn that off. In the previous pages (assignments), they now show as links with a preview icon that they can choose if they want to preview in-browser/in-Canvas. But with the new assignment I just created, the two checkbox options are still there, and I can check the auto-preview checkbox, and that works. But if I un-check it, now I don't get the icon to preview, but an arrow that produces a drop-down with preview download and Other formats options. What's different? I followed the same process to create this link as all the others, and the file it's referring to is the same type of file...
UPDATE: Right now I'm going through all my already-created assignment pages and just adding the files/links. Sometimes I get the preview icon and sometimes I get the arrow icon that lets me choose between download, preview and "other". I am doing the exact same thing every time, and the files I'm linking to have been created using exactly the same process from exactly the same source...
UPDATEUPDATE: Never mind. It /did/, but now they're all just arrows again...
Same problem with Chrome here. Started last week. Endless spinning circle in doc viewer for any pdf. Pdf files download to desktop fine. Canvas doc viewer works fine in Firefox and Edge. Does not work at all in Chrome now.
This is highly annoying because I travel with a Chromebook, Chrome is my default browser, and I begin teaching two more online courses next week.
This issue has been popping up a lot recently. It seems to happen with a file preview within content and DocViewer inside SpeedGrader. The common thread is Chrome.
What seems to be the issue (at least in every case I've seen so far) is that it is either an issue with a Chrome extension or a cookie from Instructure that appears to be a third-party cookie and is blocked. Mostly it seems to be extensions.
If you have an ad blocker, make sure you that it is disabled for Canvas.
The Honey extension, which scours sites for coupons needs removed. My wife disabled it but left it installed and the problem returned. When she removed it completely, then Canvas started working.
The Ghostery extension was reported to have problems as well.
Here's how to troubleshoot.
Open an incognito window (Shift+Ctrl+N) in Chrome. Log into Canvas and try to load the content having a problem. If it works in incognito mode, then you're likely experiencing the issue other people are.
Close the incognito window.
Go to the Extensions page in Chrome: Menu > More Tools > Extensions. Look through your installed extensions for that are rarely used or that can "read and change all your data on the websites you visit" (click on Details to find out what it can do) and focus on those first. Try disabling some of those and then reload the page with the problem in Canvas and see if the problem goes away. If not, then re-enable those extensions and try deleting some more.
A way to speed up the process if you have a bunch of extensions that you're not sure about is to disable half of them.
Keep working the half-at-a-time angle for a faster way to debug. Let's say that there are 8 extensions. If you try them one at a time, then it might take up to 8 times to find the right one.
If you disable 4 of them (1st pass) and Canvas starts working, then you enable 2 (2nd pass), and then either disable or enable 1 (3rd pass). If you disable 4 of them (1st pass) and Canvas doesn't work, then you enable all those and disable 2 (2nd pass) of the ones that you hadn't disabled previously, and then either disable or enable 1 (3rd pass).
Once you find one that you think is causing the problem, enable and disable it a couple of times with a content reload in between to confirm that it really is the problem.
I don't know if this is a Chrome issue or a Canvas issue. It might be both, but there might be other sites that are affected that you just don't know about. Chrome has been talking about enforcing the "same-site" on cookies for a while now. Canvas has said they have fixed it for all of their internal sites, but when you try to open Studio, you get warnings about cross-site resources at pendo.io and instructuremedia.com. To me, that's still not fixed.
The issue is probably an extension, but in case it's a cookie, you want to look for the third party cookie blocked symbol at the end of your location bar in Chrome.
If you see that, then some Canvas functionality may be reduced. If you click on that icon, you get this pop up.
Another place to check is the lock icon to the left of the location bar and choose cookies. There is an Allowed and a Blocked tab. Look and see if you have any blocked that look like they belong to Canvas. Canvas has a list of the domains they use here: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-18615-canvas-domain-email-and-server-management
After much experimentation, I identified Ghostery and AdBlockPlus extensions as problematic (both extensions block ads and tracking). I had to completely remove them from Chrome. Disabling/pausing them did not result in the consistent ability to see pdfs with File Preview and DocViewer. Now that I've removed them from Chrome, File Preview and DocViewer work fine when using Canvas.
Thank you!!!!!! It was the Tampermonkey extension ❤️
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