Importing Specific Content into a Canvas Course

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Importing the same course content more than once may have unintended consequences. Importing the same course content more than once will overwrite any existing content in the course you are importing to. 

Open the course that you are importing to, select Settings in the Course Navigation Menu, click Import Course Content to open the Course Import Tool.

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Select Copy a Canvas Course from the Content Type drop-down.

Begin typing the course number or name of the course that you want to import the content from in the Search for a course field. To include past enrollments in your search, make sure the Include completed courses checkbox is selected.

Choose to import “select specific content”.

Select Adjust events and due dates. Choose Remove dates so that all due dates and all available from and until dates are removed. 

Canvas displays a warning message about overwriting any existing content in the course. This message always displays regardless of whether the content was previously imported or not.

Click the Import button.

The Current Jobs section displays the status of your import. Running reports will display a progress bar. The current job will show as Waiting for Selection. Click on Select Content.

 Once in Select Content, it is always best to copy over Course Setting and Files along with Specific Content.

To Import specific content items from a content type, expand the group by clicking the arrow and select specific items to be imported.

After you have made all of your selections, click the Select Content button.

Once you have started an import, the Current Jobs menu displays the job status of any imports in progress. The number of users in the instance, the size of the import, and other factors can affect the time it takes for an import to process. Be prepared to wait.

Import Limitations:

• Canvas only processes one import at a time.

• Draft State settings are retained in course imports. If an assignment is unpublished in a course when it was copied or exported, the assignment will also be unpublished in the content import.

• Mastery Paths conditional items are not retained in course imports, and paths must be re-created after the import is completed.

• Copying content retains any links or files associated with the content, such as in an assignment.

• When selecting assignments only, Canvas imports all assessment items within the Assignments page (including any associated quizzes and discussions). Assignments will remain in their assignment groups if an entire assignment group or all assignments are imported.

• Group sets do not copy as part of the import. Any existing group sets in the new course will be linked to the group set with the same name. However, if there are no group sets with the same name in the new course, the assignment will be linked to a new Project Groups set.

• When selecting individual assignments, assignments are placed in an assignment group called Imported Assignments. However, assignments can be moved into other assignment groups as necessary.

• Enrollment-related data, which includes course users, collaborations, conferences, groups, and sections, and feature preview settings are not included in course content imports.

• Announcements and Discussions do not retain the name of the user who originally created the course content. Additionally, students do not receive announcement notifications for imported announcements. However, a badge indicating a new announcement displays on the Card View and Recent Activity Dashboards.

• Assignments with a manual grade posting policy and anonymous assignments retain the manual grade posting policy and their anonymous settings as part of the course import.

• Calendar item locations (e.g., office hours slots with an assigned office location) are not included in course imports.

• Importing courses and course files count against course file quotas.