Canvas @ Yale

Download Course to View Offline

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Courses can be downloaded in an offline, view-only mode. With this download, you cannot interact with the course content, such as completing assignments or viewing submissions. The course content is downloaded as a zip file, which includes the HTML version of the course. Downloading the course content is only accessible if modules were used.

Course content and materials can be viewed in this download, however student submissions to assignments, quizzes, discussions, etc are not included, and will be unavailable.

Table of Contents

Disabling / Enabling Offline Course Download

By default in all courses, the "Offline Course" option is enabled. In order to disable this feature, follow the steps below to uncheck the "Offline Course" option.

In order to download the offline view of the course, the option must be enabled. If you are unable to download the offline view, the option may be disabled. Follow the directions below to ensure that it is turned on.

  1. From the "Course Navigation," go to "Settings" and make sure the "Course Details" tab is selected.
  1. Scroll down until you find the "Offline Course" option. If the "Allow course content to be downloaded and viewed offline" is checked, then the feature is already enabled.
  2. If the box is not checked, select it to enable and click "Update Course Details" to save the change.

Exporting Course Content

  1. With the "Offline Course" option enabled, open "Modules" from the "Course Navigation."
  2. Click on the “Export Course Content” button in the top-right corner.
  1. Your course will be downloaded to your computer as a zip file.
    1. Once you locate the zip file, double click on the file to open the file. PC users may need to extract the folder before the files are accessible.

Depending on the size of the course, this may take a few minutes. If you remain in the page until the download is complete, the file will download directly to your computer. If you leave the page, you'll receive an email notification when the course download is complete. You can use the link in the email to download the file.

  1. Once the folder is extracted, open the "index.html" file.
    1. The file will then open in your default browser.
    2. The offline download only has the content that was available at the time of download. In order to see new content, you will have to download the content each time.

Viewing the Offline Course

From the "index.html" file, you can view the offline version of the course. This will only include content that was available at the time of download. In order to see the newest content in offline mode, you will need to do another export.

  1. To view the course files, click on the "Files" link at the top.
  2. To open the course content, click on the name of the content in its specific module.
  3. If any content can only be accessed online, the content link includes an external icon that will redirect you to the online resource.

For more help, please contact [email protected].

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