Canvas File Cleanup

If you would like to purge old content from your Canvas course, there are two ways that you can accomplish that goal:

Unpublish Items in a Live Course

Note: If students use materials that are not added to a module and do not appear on the Modules page, they will be deleted. If you cannot see it on the Modules page, this approach is not a good fit for your course.

1. Go to Modules.  For each module, select Unpublish Module and All Items.
2. Go to Pages.  Unpublish all pages.
3. Go to Files.  Unpublish all files.
4. Return to Modules.  For each module, select Publish Module and All Items.
5. Return to Pages and Files,  Delete unpublished items not used in the course modules.

These steps assure that you are only dealing with files and items that you use, not old items that are weighting down your accessibility score.  (Note that the new Files view lets you bulk publish and unpublish within folders.)

For a demo visit, watch:

If you delete something accidentally, go to the Home page of the course and add \undelete to the end of the URL.  Click enter and a page will load of items deleted from the course.  You can click the Restore button next to an item to restore to the course.  You may also be able to find the resource in a previous offering of the course.

Reduce Files During Import/Export

This process will import only used content into your new empty course.

1. In an empty course, select the Import Existing Content button on the right side of the home page.
2. In the Select Content Type dropbox, select Copy a Canvas course, locate the course you’d like to clean up, and check the Select Specific Content radio button.  Then click + Add to Import Queue.
   Note: If you’re copying the course to another semester, you can use the adjust events and due dates feature here as well.
3. Click the Select content button.  In the Select Content for Import window, fully check ALL boxes EXCEPT Pages and Files. This will leave behind any pages not referenced in the Modules section of the course and any files that are not referenced within course content.  If there are specific pages you know are required, but aren’t published in the Modules section (like the course Home Page), you can select those individual pages now as well.  If you don’t, don’t worry, you’ll be able to identify them in the next step.
4. After the import processes, navigate to Settings and click Validate Links in Content.  Run the Course Link Validator in both courses.  Compare results between courses.  If the new course shows new broken links, these are likely links to Canvas pages that are not referenced in the Modules section and were not copied into the new course.  The Course Link Validator will help you identify these pages.
5. If applicable, run the course content import process again (see Step 2) selecting only the pages you’ve identified that did not already import into the new course and then fix broken links identified in the previous step. When finished, run the Course Link Validator again to ensure no other content was missed.
6. If the course uses a Course Image (see Settings>Course Details), it may have to be manually added to the new course.  You can locate the course image in the original files from the Files section in the course_image folder.

For a handout on this process, visit Canvas File Cleanup Process

For a demo, watch the following video:

Reduce Files During Import/Export Transcript