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How to validate the links in your course

  • Updated

As you add or update your course, you may have links to external URLs or files within your course (e.g., documents, media, etc.). Canvas allows you to validate the links in your course to verify there will either be no issues or provide a list of problematic links so that you may fix before students progress through your course. 

  1. Once you are in your course, open Settings.                                                            Open Settings
  2. On the right side of the screen, click on Validate Course Links. Open Validation Link
  3. Click on the Start Link Validation button. Start Link Validation
  4. If any links are found in the course, Canvas displays the number of links [1], followed by the name of the content item and the content's associated invalid link(s) [2]. View Links
  5. By default, the Show links to unpublished content checkbox is selected [1]. The page will display any broken links in unpublished content [2]. View Unpublished Content
  6. The validator displays broken links and images by item type [1]. Broken content is identified as either a link or an image [2]. Non-existent content means that the object is invalid and should be replaced [3]. Unreachable objects mean the image could not be displayed [4].View Broken Link Details

  7. To update links within course content, click the name of the content item [1].

    After you update your content, you can validate your links again by returning to the Link Validator page and clicking the Restart Link Validation button [2]. Update Links

This tool is available in all Canvas courses and runs on-demand, so you can run as often as necessary. Please note that if you continue to get a broken link report even though you believe you have resolved any link errors, this could be because a hidden link in the HTML is broken. To see hidden links in your Canvas component's HTML, click on the HTML editor button below the lower right corner of the content editor for that component. You can now search through the HTML for hidden broken links.

Once you run the validator, here's more information for how to add, edit, or remove those links:

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