Student: How do I manage the file storage quota, so that I can upload images, videos, files to a Discussion?
You will learn how to delete some of your old images, PowerPoint, Word, audio, and video files that you have previously uploaded to a course's Discussion (and/or to your Files area of Canvas). Even your completed courses all count toward your file storage quota. The current file storage limit for Cal State Fullerton students is 262 MB.
This process is only necessary if you have an error stating that you have exceeded your file storage quota for Canvas, or if you find you cannot upload a new image, file, or video to the Rich Content Editor (textbox) of a Discussion or Assignment (see screenshot below).
As a matter of process, Canvas will compress all uploaded videos. For example, if you upload a 100 MB video file, Canvas may compress it down to 10 MB, This will significantly reduce the quality of the video. This process may take a few hours. Meaning that if you try again the next day, you might find you now have some file storage space that has been freed up.
To begin the process of freeing up space in your file storage, let's delete some files from old courses that are no longer in use.
1. Click on your Account.
2. Select Files.
3. You should see a listing of your courses.
Note: Your course names will be different than what you see here. Most of the files you upload to your courses should be listed under My Files.
4. Focus only on these folders at the top of the list.
Ignore the Submissions folder as you can view those files but cannot delete them.
You may not have all of these folders, but nevertheless the folders you need are at the top of the list.
5. You can see that these files date back a few years.
However, those files are very small, so you would have to delete hundreds or thousands of them to free up a significant amount of space.
The largest files are usually video (.mp4, .m4v), audio (.mp3, .m4a), PowerPoints (.ppt, .pptx) and PDF (.pdf). Other large files might include images (.png, .jpg).
Let's save time and do a search.
6. Type a file type such as 'png' in the Search box.
7. If you have a result, click on the Size column to sort by file size.
If you don't have any results, try a different file type like "mp4" or "ppt".
8. After checking the date (1), hover over the item to make the Three Dots menu (2) appear.
9. Click on the Three Dots menu and select Delete.
10. Click on OK.
Note that if you delete this file, it will no longer appear in the discussion or Rich Content Editor (textbox) where it was originally uploaded.
11. How can I avoid this in the future?
You can help minimize the need to delete files by:
- Using Dropbox and linking the files from Dropbox into the Canvas Discussion.
- Uploading a video to Canvas Studio then embedding it into the discussion (it still stays in Studio).
- Compressing any video before uploading it to a course.
- Compressing any PowerPoint presentation before uploading (or using Dropbox instead).
- Resizing any images to the display size (and compressing them) before upload.
Article Summary
You have now learned how to delete some older files in your Canvas File Storage area.