Canvas Help Guide
How to Download Student Work in Bulk

Some assignments may require you to download student submissions to view them for grading. Canvas provides an option to be able to download all of the submission for a individual assignment inside of a individual course. This can help to speed up the grading process rather than having to download each individual file.

Bulk Download

Getting Started

If you want to download all student submissions for an assignment, you can download them from the Gradebook in a bulk download. All submissions are downloaded as a single ZIP file that you can use to grade submissions on your computer offline. If a student has resubmitted an assignment, only the most recent submission will be included in the ZIP file. You can also download assignments from the assignment page.

Bulk downloads can be used for the following submission types: file uploads, text entries (displayed as HTML files), website URLs (displayed as HTML files), and Google Docs submissions.

In bulk downloads, Canvas automatically amends the file name for each submission type:

For group assignments, the file name will include the name of the assigned group.
For individual student assignments, the file name will include the name of the student (last name first).
When anonymous grading is enabled, student names are not included in the names of downloaded files.

Note: After downloading student files, you can re-upload all student submissions in the Gradebook. However, you cannot change the names of the submission files. Otherwise Canvas will not be able to recognize the files that should be replaced.

Open Grades

In Course Navigation, click the Grades link.

Open Assignment Menu

Hover over the assignment column header and click the Options icon.

Download Submissions

Click the Download Submissions link.

View Progress

View the progress of the file compression by tracking the progress bar.

Download File

When the file is finished processing, download the file by clicking the Click here to download link [1]. Canvas will also include the size of the download file as part of the link for your reference.

To close the download window, click the Close icon [2].

Open ZIP File

Once the file has been downloaded, locate the ZIP file on your computer [1]. To open the file, either double click to open it (Mac users) or right-click the file and select Extract All (PC users).

When the file expands, click the submissions folder [2] to view the assignment submissions [3].

Additional Guides

Weighting Grades

Viewing Student Results

Viewing Student Quiz Log

Back to Homepage

If you need additional support you can contact the OTL Department by emailing canvas@suu.edu or calling 435-865-8555.