Grades - exporting and importing

Important: please be aware that for privacy reasons you should not publish a document or PDF in Canvas which allows students to see other students' grades! The Canvas Gradebook is not the official channel to publish final grades; final grades are published through VU.nl.

If you want to upload grades from Testvision in to the Canvas gradebook, please check this instruction. Links to an external site.

Canvas allows you to easily export grades to a comma separated values file (.csv). This file can be opened in (for instance) Microsoft Excel, so you can edit grades. You can then import the grades back into Canvas.

The steps below contain a general guide to this process. This guide should work on most Windows and Mac computers, using recent versions of internet browsers and Microsoft Excel.   

There are two important things to know about this process: 1. The required, one-time only step to activate a certain setting (see below) 2. For best results, the CSV from Canvas should never be saved as a different file format: you can update the file, but you should always save it as a CSV file

Required, one-time only step

• In Canvas, go to Account in the left menu, then to Settings, then scroll down to select one of the two following options:
  
  • If your computer uses a comma as a decimal separator, select Use semicolons to separate fields in Gradebook Exports (this option is recommended for most Dutch computers).
  • If your computer uses a period as a decimal separator, select Include byte-order mark in Gradebook Exports.

Canvas will remember this setting, but it only applies to your user account: other teachers will have to select this option as well if they want to export/import grades.

Exporting grades to Excel

• Go to the course you want to export grades from, and go to Grades.
• Make sure you have selected all students (Showing All sections), otherwise you will only download the grades of one Section.
• Click on View and make sure the option to split student names is not selected (unchecked).
• Click on Export, then on CSV File.
• Download the file, for instance to your desktop.
• Double-click the file to open it in Microsoft Excel. Because of the selected semicolon option, Excel should import the CSV file correctly with columns for each type of data.
  (Don't start Excel first, in order to import the CSV file: instead, double-click the file to open it directly in Excel.)
  (If you only see data in the first column (including a lot of commas) then make sure you have selected the right option in the first step.)

Importing grades into Canvas
After editing the grades in Excel, you can import this file back into Canvas to upload the changes.

• Remove all the data you do not need but make sure to leave first five columns intact, as you can read about in the Guides Links to an external site.. These columns are: Student Name, Student ID, SIS User ID, SIS Login ID, Section.
  When deleting other columns, make sure to delete the whole column by clicking ‘delete’, to prevent importing empty columns.
• Click on Save: this will save your results to the same CSV file you downloaded. Excel will ask you if you want to keep using the CSV format. Click on Yes. 
• Go back to the gradebook in your Canvas course. Make sure the view is set to Showing All sections. Click Import.
• Click Choose file. Search for your file and click Open.
• Click Upload data.
• Carefully check the following information:
  • Check if the students received the right grades in the right column.
  • Check if there are no other changes to your grades or columns.
  • If you created a new column in Excel, Canvas will report: "You uploaded some assignments that don't appear to be in your gradebook before now. Please tell me if it is a new assignment, or if it represents an existing assignment."
    Click Choose Assignment and choose A new assignment. Make sure points possible is filled, for example with 10. Click Continue.
• If everything is correct: click Save changes.

Canvas might need a few minutes to process all changes.