How do I change the name of downloaded assignment file submissions?

Question

Hi there

I have an assignment that requires students to submit a word document. When I download all submissions as a zip file, Canvas adds a prefix to each word document file name. e.g. it will add "studenttest_127_10280". The issue we have with this is we need to keep files anonymous and have already asked students to name their document with a specific naming convention. Renaming all files will take a long time and is not possible to do with ant renamer as the number of characters differs for each file.

Does anyone know how to stop canvas adding on the prefix to the downloaded submissions when they are downloaded like this? (I noticed that when I download a submission one at a time via speedgrader that it won't add anything to the name, but this is time consuming). Also as an aside what is the relevance of the numbers that are added to name? The first 3 digit number is the Canvas ID but I am curious on what the second set of digits represents.

Thanks

Emma

greydon · Accepted Answer

Hello @EmmaRitchie

Thank you for contacting the Instructure Community. We're sorry to hear you've been experiencing issues with downloading assignments. Thank you for your explanation - to be upfront, there is not a way to change the names of the file submissions when you download or bulk download. The students' file submissions will be uploaded as they have them titled from their devices. You can download them individually and that same title will display for you. However, when you bulk download all assignments, Canvas does alter them slightly to ensure that you do not mix up student submissions. I.e. "final exam" could be difficult to grade if you downloaded them for viewing and grading offline. Unfortunately, there is no feature or option to change this and bulk downloading will render them with their unique titles regardless of anonymous submissions or not - You would need to edit them manually.