Wondering if you have broken links in your Canvas site? The Course Link Validator tool will help you find them.
When you run the Link Validation tool, it will search the site for any link issues and provide a report detailing the type and location in the site.
Running the Course Link Validator
- In Course Navigation, click the Settings link.
- In the right sidebar, click the Validate Links in Content link.
- Click the Start Link Validation button.
Diagnosing and Fixing Common Issues
The report you receive after running the validation tool will provide a description of the type of issues and a link to both the content item and the broken link itself.
This list outlines the types of problems you may encounter and how to fix them.
“External links in this resource were unreachable”
- Meaning: A link to webpage outside your site is no longer working.
- Remedy: Track down a working version of the webpage and update the link.
“Non-existent content referenced in this resource”
- Meaning: You have a link to content in your side that might have been deleted or renamed (changing the title changes the URL).
- Remedy: Remove the link and relink it to existing content
“Unpublished content referenced in this resource”
- Meaning: You’ve linked to content that’s not published so your students won’t be able to access it.
- Remedy: Publish the page you’re linking to or remove the link if you’re not ready to have students view the content.
“Links to other courses in this resource may not be accessible by the students in this course”
- Meaning: You’ve linked to content in a course that your student aren’t in. This usually happens if you copy and paste links directly from another course site.
- Remedy: You either need to download the content from the original site and create a link to it in your new site, or you can import the content containing the links (Canvas will automatically update the links in this case). See Importing Specific Canvas Content for instructions.