[ARCHIVED] how to undelete / restore comments on Discussion?

[canethyyip]

just deleted a student's comment on Discussion accidentally...

is there any way to restore the comments?

[Steve_Watts]

Hi  @canethyyip ​

Canvas does have an undelete function that lets you restore certain content items (pages, files etc) but I've just done a quick test and unfortunately it doesn't show deleted discussion posts. Therefore I suggest logging a support ticket with Instructure to ask if they have a recent backup of the course from which they can retrieve the deleted comment.

[kona]

 @canethyyip ​, depending on why you posted the comment (originally), your comment might still be in the Canvas Beta or Test environment. My recommendation is to check there and see if you can find it - How do I access the Canvas test environment?​ & How do I access the Canvas beta environment?

Hope this helps!

[estaples]

My login doesn't work for beta or test environments...  Any suggestions?

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi there, @estaples ...

The new links for the Guides that @kona had linked to are located at:

• How do I access the Canvas test environment as an instructor?
• How do I access the Canvas beta environment as an instructor?

If you are unable to access your school's "test" or "beta" environment, you'd need to reach out to your school's local Canvas administrator or someone from your school's Online Learning/eLearning department.  They may be able to help you with this.

[smhickey · Accepted solution]

There is no warning/confirm message and there is no way to recover a deleted discussion post in the event one is accidently removed. The Canvas support desk cannot recover them either; they can only recover entire discussion topics, not individual postings.

I would like to see both a warning message with a confirm delete message and a recovery option for either (or both) Students and Instructors.

[Stef_retired]

smhickey‌, it sounds like you are suggesting a feature idea, and the place for that is https://community.canvaslms.com/community/ideas/feature-ideas?sr=search&searchId=eee1a8d2-3085-4937-.... When you head over there, you'll see that the feature idea process is currently on hold (please refer to https://community.canvaslms.com/community/ideas/feature-ideas/blog/2017/01/17/changes-are-closer-for...‌), but during this holding period, new submissions are still being collected.

[helfco]

Not sure this solution is still valid as of Jan. 2021. My beta environment didn't have any student posted discussion content from yesterday which was Monday. Tried to restore a deleted student post today (Tuesday). If the Beta doesn't get reset till Saturday those discussion posts should have been there right? Here's a pic of side by side accounts in Discussions. Left side is Beta which is completely empty.

[kmay]

If you can't find a discussion entry in Beta or Test because it was too recent, it will be stored in Canvas Data. It may be a day or two before that particular entry will be available in Canvas Data, but it will appear. If your school has access to Canvas Data, the data can be extracted from discussion_entry_dim, discussion_entry_fact, discussion_topic_dim, and discussion_topic_fact table files into excel or a temporary database. 

The item you are looking for will first appear as 'active' and in the next days batch of files appear as 'deleted'. No matter which you see it as, you can restore the reply one by copying the "message" field text from the database or excel sheets and re-post it.

Here is the sql query I used in my temp database to find the entries for a specific course, filling in the xxxxx with the canvas_id of the course from the course URL.

select ed.*
from discussion_entry_dim ed
join discussion_entry_fact ef on ef.discussion_entry_id=ed.id
join discussion_topic_fact tf on tf.discussion_topic_id=ef.topic_id
join discussion_topic_dim td on td.id=tf.discussion_topic_id
where td.course_id in (select id from course_dim where canvas_id=xxxxx)
-- td.canvas_id = xxxxxxxxxx
-- tf.user_id in (select id from user_dim where canvas_id = xxxxxxx)
order by ed.created_at desc
 

[helfco]

Do you have step by step instructions on how to do this? I'm not familiar with sql query or the temp database etc.