Canvas Tutorials Check for Broken Links in Your Course

Steps to Validate Links in a Course

Important Update

Starting with the March 30, 2019 release update instructors can choose to be notified of broken links in their course. Instructors can visit their Notification Preferences page and select the Content Link Error notification. Instructors are notified with both the location and content of the link error.

It is important to make sure all the links in your course work properly. You can check your course for dead links in course settings. Click Settings in the left navigation of your course. On the right sidebar menu click Validate Links in Content.

course settings menu

The course link validator page will display. Review the numbered items below.

Course Link Validator screen

Click Start Link Validation. Once you have run the link validation process, you can click this button again restart the link validation process again. Wait patiently until the process is complete. Once the process is complete, a message highlighted in blue will display the number of bad links in the course.
Each page that has bad links will be listed with all the bad links indented in a list. Right-click over the page title to open the page in a new browser tab. This will allow you to switch back and forth from the page you are editing to the validate list. Correct the links and run the validation until you know they are no more errors.
When the message states "unpublished content referenced in this resources" it means there is a link to unpublished content item on the page. Please note students cannot view unpublished content and will see a message that states they do not have permission to view the content.
When the message states "external links in this resource were unreachable" this can mean one of the following things is occurring:
- The link goes to a resource where you must login to view the content. You do not need to fix the link.
- The link was incorrectly keyed when it was created. Check the URL to make sure it is correct.
- The link has gone bad from website where it is located. Go to the website and see if you can find the link again.
When the message states "non-existent content referenced in this resource" this means the content that is linked to has been deleted or title changed.

Canvas Guides

Review the Canvas guide linked below.