Preview in Overlay mode prevents links from working in word docs and PDFs

[AndrewDOchs]

Hi community, we've been noticing that when you upload a word doc or PDF to Canvas and have correctly coded links to websites in those docs or PDFs, if the doc or PDF is displayed in the Canvas "preview in overlay" mode, the links do not work. They'll show as links, you can hover over them and the link URL will appear, but clicking will not do anything.

You can right-click on the link and choose open in new tab and they work that way, but that's not very convenient or intuitive for many users. The links will also work if you use the "preview inline" option. But that's a much less convenient option for viewing most word docs. This really seems like a basic and important functionality that Instructure should fix ASAP.

[dbrace]

Hi @AndrewDOchs,

Thank you for bringing this up. Have you contacted Canvas Support directly (the Canvas Community is not Canvas Support) and reported it to them?

-Doug

[AndrewDOchs]

Hi @dbrace! Yes, I did do a chat with Instructure support this morning. The support person I chatted with confirmed the issue, looked for documentation on it, could not find any, so said they would have to refer the issue to the "second level team for further investigation". Haven't heard anything back yet.

[dbrace]

Thank you for reporting it to Canvas Support, @AndrewDOchs, because this is the type of issue that we as members of the Canvas Community could not fix and would only be able to workarounds (such as downloading the file, right-click, not use the default overlay option).

If you are willing, it would be great if you could return and let us know what they say.

-Doug

[AndrewDOchs]

Yes, definitely not expecting the community to directly fix this problem. I was hoping other members of the community might agree that this is significant functionality issue and help bring some pressure to bear on Instructure to actually fix it.