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Error Importing Outcomes from CSV to Canvas?

Question asked by KEITH THOMSEN on Apr 9, 2018
Latest reply on Oct 29, 2018 by Heidi Burgiel

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Hello! I'm driving myself nuts trying to figure this out, and I figured that I'd rather just post a cry for help rather than sitting here staring at it while trying over and over again.

I continue to get an error when I import my information to Canvas. I've tried using the provided guide, Outcomes Import Format Documentation - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation , but I'm still having little luck.

The typical error says "The following errors occurred: Row 1: An unexpected error has occurred" though I somehow got past that and got a whole string of errors regarding another row.

I'm attaching a short link to my data if a kind soul wants to take a look and tell me what I've done wrong. I've gone through and I've tried to fix everything I can identify, and at this point I'm likely change blind.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQtls0QDSh5mc0eIycLMiwiVZgGvEbW-HmCa-f9bvpH_D7Z8YEU0VSVZNYUmCx-AOiRb6CnVNqFvDHG/pubhtml?gid=1737311864&single=true

KEITH THOMSEN Apr 13, 2018 10:45 PM

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So I ended up sending this to the guy who runs Canvas for my district and after asking around he discovered that this is actually an error with Canvas itself, not the way I have it set up. Turns out that at this time Canvas doesn't allow an import of a '0' score for the outcomes.This has solved my problem for the time being and apparently they are planning on fixing this in the near future!

Thank you all for your help!

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Eric Werth Apr 10, 2018 5:49 AM
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Hi KEITH. I'm sorry to hear about the problem you are running in to with importing outcomes. I can't answer your question, but will share it with the Canvas Admins and Canvas Developers user groups to increase the visibility of your post. Hopefully someone will have some insight in to what is happening.

All the best!
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Ken Black Apr 10, 2018 6:47 AM
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KEITH THOMSEN, I was delighted to see this only for the reason that I thought I may have been the only one experiencing issues with this. I'm replying to this partly to make sure that I get alerted to any updates, but also to share with you and others my process.

The output from the Outcomes reports is messy, to begin with, and certainly not ready (I don't think...) for a direct re-import to another subaccount. One has to go through it to find all the HTML tags, odd characters, and everyone's favorite: putting the commas in double quotation marks. I've used a combination of Notepad/Wordpad to find/replace the HTML tags, and then back to Excel to find/replace the commas and/or previously-existing quotation marks so that they can be replaced with double-quotation marks. (One can't do that in Wordpad/Notepad, of course, because of the commas separating the fields!)

After all this, I wind up with very similar errors to what you have experienced when trying the import.

Surely there must be an explanation; but I'm also curious to hear from others if they have found any shortcuts for the sometimes-tedious work of going through the CSVs that are output to remove all of the oddities. (The only one I've found for Excel users for removing HTML tags is in the Find what text box to type <*>, and leave the Replace with text box blank. Otherwise, it's just going through all the possibilities.)
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- KEITH THOMSEN @ Ken Black on Apr 10, 2018 8:32 AM
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  That's the thing, I've exported it from Google as a CSV file and then I've opened that CSV file with notepad just to make sure it put everything where it belongs, and it looks exactly like the example they posted.
  
  I've even migrated the data to Excel first, then I exported it as a CSV and tried it that way.
  
  I'm guessing I'm missing something simple and stupid, but at this point I can't figure it out and the fifteen times I've tried it just don't seem to help me, ha!
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Matt Hanes Apr 10, 2018 10:21 AM
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KEITH, I don't know if this is good news or bad news but I took your Google spreadsheet, copy and pasted into my google drive, clicked Download As...CSV file, and then imported that CSV file into one of my sub-accounts and it imported without any issues. So here is a link to my version of the CSV file that worked: ELA Standards - Google Sheets
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- KEITH THOMSEN @ Matt Hanes on Apr 10, 2018 3:39 PM
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  That opens up an interesting line of inquiry. However, I tried to use the link you gave me and it still didn't work. I even tried using it on a separate account at canvas.instructure.com (my old account before my district started to use it, and it still didn't work.
  
  This has to be on my end at this point. I'm downloading it as a CSV file directly from Google. Is there something else that someone can suggest I look for? This is baffling and annoying, lol.
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  - Ken Black @ KEITH THOMSEN on Apr 11, 2018 7:21 AM
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    I'm still with you on this one, Keith! It didn't work for me, either. (Though this time I tried it on our test server, so I didn't get an email report, but still...it should have worked.) Makes me wonder if it's some unique hiccup to certain folks based on the AWS server that their Canvas installation is running from, or what. We may both have to report this to Instructure Support...which is bit tricky in my case, since I can't do it directly. I'm still curious to hear from others out there in the Community, though.
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  - Heidi Burgiel @ KEITH THOMSEN on Oct 19, 2018 11:20 AM
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    I have also been tearing my hair out trying to upload outcomes. One issue that was addressed in an Instructure webinar was that once you've used a vendor_guid you cannot re-use it.
    
    This doesn't appear to apply to groups, just to outcomes, and I think I've seen examples of re-use of vendor_guid for outcomes. But it's something to check!
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    - Heidi Burgiel @ Heidi Burgiel on Oct 29, 2018 8:13 AM
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      Also, we had some formatting issues (trailing spaces, apostrophes from the wrong character set). These were resolved by pasting my Excel file into Google Sheets, then downloading in .csv format.
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KEITH THOMSEN Apr 13, 2018 10:45 PM
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So I ended up sending this to the guy who runs Canvas for my district and after asking around he discovered that this is actually an error with Canvas itself, not the way I have it set up. Turns out that at this time Canvas doesn't allow an import of a '0' score for the outcomes.This has solved my problem for the time being and apparently they are planning on fixing this in the near future!
Thank you all for your help!
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- Ken Black @ KEITH THOMSEN on Apr 17, 2018 6:42 AM
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  Just now circling back to this, Keith. Thanks for posting that! Just out of curiosity, what you replacing the 0s with? (Just a blank cell?)
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  - KEITH THOMSEN @ Ken Black on Apr 17, 2018 1:08 PM
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    I actually just replaced them with '1's. This year it's less of an issue for me, so I'm hoping it's fixed for next year.
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Mohamed Mabrouk Jul 8, 2018 6:20 AM
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@ KEITH THOMSEN I noticed that on file outcomes 'CSV' you shared that the parent_guides expended to be ELA9-11 , 12 , 13 which has not a vendor_guide listed.
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Error Importing Outcomes from CSV to Canvas?

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