Assignment Submissions are not keeping their formatting

[sara_weaver]

Updated to clarify the issue: We've had reports similar to this issue where students' assignments are not being rendered with the correct formatting when an instructor tries to view them in the Speedgrader. Does anyone know if this issue has been addressed? The post I linked to didn't seem to have a resolution other than downloading submissions or requiring students submit PDFs, and that was from nearly 7 years ago.

[mzimmerman · Accepted solution]

Hi @sara_weaver 

I think that it comes up in the previous thread, but what shows in Speedgrader is just a "file previewer" that attempts to let instructors preview a large number of file types, but which may or may not display all the formatting details correctly.  This is not a question of "reformatting" the documents--the submission files themselves are not changed--just not being able to fully render them within Canvas.

If there are questions about the page formatting, it's always best to download the student's actual submitted file and view that.

[mzimmerman · Accepted solution]

Hi @sara_weaver 

I think that it comes up in the previous thread, but what shows in Speedgrader is just a "file previewer" that attempts to let instructors preview a large number of file types, but which may or may not display all the formatting details correctly.  This is not a question of "reformatting" the documents--the submission files themselves are not changed--just not being able to fully render them within Canvas.

If there are questions about the page formatting, it's always best to download the student's actual submitted file and view that.

[sara_weaver]

Thanks @mzimmerman - That is the issue. The faculty would like to be able to view these submissions directly within the Speedgrader, but since the formatting is not displaying correctly it makes it very hard to do so and kind of defeats the purpose of the Speedgrader itself. 

[VPundir · Accepted solution]

Yes, SpeedGrader's preview is not perfect, and my understanding is that it messes up the formatting particularly if the file is created on a Mac. There's not a solution for this at the moment, as far as I am aware, beyond workarounds, such as the one suggested by @mzimmerman