Interaction of Canvas files and unpublished modules

Last week a student approached me and asked me to help them find a file their instructor had posted for them to read. I had the student show me what was happening on their device. The student navigated to Files in Canvas and we could both see that the files were posted and visible to the student.

"What's the problem?" I asked. The files are there and you can see them. The student then clicked on one of the files.


The file names were visible, but because the file was in an unpublished module, the file is inaccessible to the students. When the student accessed the Modules the student saw the following.

Puzzled, I told the student I would follow up on the matter later and that for now they should approach their instructor for assistance. 

A check later revealed that while the individual files are published (the link symbol at the left above means the item is a file), the modules themselves remain unpublished. This is a design feature of Canvas: you can get a module ready for publishing with all items published, but "hide" the whole module behind the single module publishing switch in the gray title bar at the top of the module. The modules above can be seen as being unpublished because the circle with the slash at the top right in each module has not yet been clicked on.

The above is what a published module with published items looks like. The red circle is around the "module publish" button. With that not published, the files contained in the module are inaccessible to the students - by design. That way an instructor can upload files and know that the students cannot open the files until the associated module is published. 

I was unaware of this interaction between files and unpublished modules. I tend to avoid using files because viewing some file types may require specific apps or software on the students device. How do I get around using files? I use Pages instead. That does require some up front work moving material into Pages, but I know that those will render properly on any device the student uses, both in a desktop browser and the Canvas Student app.



This is a page as seen on a desktop/laptop computer. Setting up Pages was principally a copy and paste operation, not a retyping operation. There was, as always, some format clean-up that I had to do. And the images had to be individually uploaded - they do not copy and paste as the text does.



Canvas Pages have a capable rich text editor including support for mathematical equations via a math editor. 


If I need to get deep into the weeds of formatting, the editor includes an HTML editor that lets me do that. As a result I have not needed to use the File functionality. For some courses, however, files are the optimal way to distribute documents in the course. When doing so, do make sure that the files are linked from published Modules. Use Modules to organize your course materials and guide students through your course. 

To see how I use seventeen modules to guide students through ESS 101w, have a look at the ESS 101w course in the Commons.

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