@JerryArkenberg …
Ah, I see! It sounds like you are referring to the Canvas “Inbox”. For clarification, the “Inbox” is not the same as e-mail. For example, you cannot use the “Inbox” to e-mail your friends and family that are not enrolled in the same courses that you are enrolled in using the Canvas interface. In the same way, your friends and family cannot e-mail you so that you would receive their e-mail messages via the Canvas “Inbox”. The “Inbox” is to send/receive messages to/from your students. Students can also message each other using the “Inbox”. You can, however, also set up your Canvas account to receive notifications of those Canvas “Inbox” messages to your e-mail address. That is all handled via your “Account” >> “Notifications” screen in Canvas…where you can set up your notifications for your entire Canvas account…and/or you can set up notifications per course…that’s entirely up to you.
To address your question…have a look at this Guide:
How do I attach a file to a message as an instruct... - Instructure Community
Specifically, take a look at this part of the light blue box at the top of that Guide:
Note: Attachments appear in your user files in the Conversation Attachments folder and count against the files limit for your account.
It sounds like your user “Files” area (not your course “Files” area) has maybe reached the limit that you are allowed…as you’ve indicated. You’d either need to remove some files from your user “Files” area (“Account” >> “Files”), or you’d need to send your zip file another way…maybe through your regular e-mail client (Microsoft Outlook, for example). Or, does your school have a shared folder space where students can access course files on their network outside of Canvas? What about uploading the file(s) to your cloud storage account such as Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.? You could create a folder on one of those cloud storage systems, dump the file(s) in there, and then share the URL with those that need it by copying the shared URL into a Canvas message for your students. Just make sure that the sharing permissions for the folder you’ve created are set correctly. (I think if you were to integrate either Google Drive or the Microsoft O365 LTIs into your course, you could also share the file this way. You could talk to your school’s Canvas admin to see if they have the Google and/or O365 LTI integrations set up for your courses.)
Hopefully this extra bit of info will be of some help to you. Sing out if you have other questions…thanks!
