What happens when I copy from Word into Canvas?

Converting Word documents into Canvas pages, assignments, or other content can be really valuable for students navigating Canvas courses. Students using the Canvas mobile app often have trouble accessing Word files from their mobile devices; these issues are less likely to occur when the content is built in the Canvas Rich Content Editor (RCE). It can also make things easier on the instructor by eliminating many of the steps needed to update content or instructions. Instead of pulling the file, updating it, and reuploading it, instructors can directly edit the Canvas page.

However, instructors making the jump from Word documents to Canvas-native content may see a large uptick in the number of errors in UDOIT. Copying from Word can sometimes bring over extraneous HTML that UDOIT sees as issues. Seeing a huge increase in the number errors can be discouraging, but many of the fixes are easy to address, and the issue can be avoided easily moving forward.

Why it matters

At first glance, the content copied from Word into Canvas may appear “normal” or without issues. However, copying the content this way can lead to courses that are inconsistent. For example, copying content from Word into Canvas will often lead to a “avoid using color alone for emphasis” error, even though the text appears black. This is because there is a color code in the HTML for the page, and a screen reader wouldn’t emphasize any text. This could be problematic for content that you do want emphasized that you would normally put in bold or italics. 

Other errors are tied to outdated code that should no longer be used. For example, copying from older versions of Word documents into Canvas will sometimes lead to a <font> tag being carried over. This is against best practices; typography is controlled using CSS, and these font tags can lead to inflexibility when you need to edit pages later or issues with future browser updates.

How to fix it

If you haven't copied in your content yet

If you want to start moving Word documents over to the Canvas Rich Content Editor, a good first step to take is to convert the content to plain text before doing so. There are several ways to accomplish this:

1. You can right click on the Word file on your computer, then hover over "Open With" and choose Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac). Once you've opened the Word document in one of these programs, you can copy and paste the text into Canvas.
2. You can copy and paste your Word document into one of the programs above.
   1. If you use a Windows computer:
      1. Copy the text from the Word document.
      2. Create a new document in Notepad, and paste the text in Notepad (or a similar program).
      3. Copy the text from Notepad, and paste that text into Canvas.
   2. If you use a Mac:
      1. Copy the text from the Word document.
      2. Create a new document in TextEdit, and paste the text in TextEdit (or a similar program).
      3. Copy the text from TextEdit, and paste that text into Canvas.
   3. You can also copy and paste your content directly from Word into the Rich Content Editor in Canvas, select all your text, and click the "clear all formatting" button (appears as a T with a line under it an dan eraser to the right of it).

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After you finish copying and pasting the content, you will need to reapply any formatting you did in Word (bold, italics, etc.), and then you can save the Canvas content as normal.

Fix it in Canvas UDOIT (if you've copied in your content already)

If you've already copied your content into Canvas and are seeing error messages in UDOIT, the fixes should be pretty easy. You're likely to see one of the following errors:

• Avoid Using Color Alone for Emphasis: If you are seeing this error and the text in the preview is black and should remain black, you can click "Remove Color" from the options on the left and click "Save." This will take care of the issue.
  • Note: We will be talking more about this particular issue this semester in a later digital accessibility tip. Only fix this issue in this way if the text is black, should remain black, and requires no other means of emphasis.
• Font Tag Should Not Be Used: If you are seeing this error, you should open the Canvas page, click the "Edit" button, then click "Save" on the page without changing anything. Because the font tag is incompatible with HTML5, the Canvas RCE will remove this tag once the page has been saved again. If this does not work, you can use the "clear all formatting" button in Canvas to remove this tag.

To see the UDOIT remediation process in action, check out the UDOIT tutorial from COLRS!

Fix it with ODA & COLRS

Join the Office of Digital Accessibility and the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service for a 30- minute workshop on tackling copying content from Word into Canvas.

• What: Fix It: Copying Content from Word into Canvas Workshop
• When: Thursday, February 13, 11:00 a.m.
• Where: COLRS Zoom Room