Deletion of user records and courses FAQ

Q. How long are Canvas user records and courses kept for?

A. Historic users and courses need to be deleted for two reasons: to comply with the legal (GDPR) requirements regarding retention and storage of personal data (staff and students); and to minimise the storage costs of long-term data. Users and courses will be automatically deleted from Canvas according to the specifications described below.

Refer to our page: Deletion of user records and courses for more information and cautions for staff.

User deletion (staff and students)

SSO users will be deleted from Canvas as follows:

  • Staff access to Canvas is removed immediately their SSO expires (that is, as soon as they leave the University).
  • For students, 11 months after their SSO has expired, they will be soft deleted, meaning that their data will not be visible to anyone any more, but can be recovered if needed (e.g. as evidence to justify a University decision)
  • 5 years after the soft deletion the student record will be hard deleted (i.e. no longer recoverable). 
  • As of November 2020 the 11 months has been temporarily extended to 23 months to accommodate students impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic

Non-SSO (external) user accounts will be automatically deleted after 13 months of inactivity (having received three warnings during the 12th month of inactivity).

Course deletion

  • All Canvas courses with a Term end date (or a different specified End Date) will be automatically soft deleted 11 years thereafter.
  • If there is no Term end date or specified End Date, then the course will be automatically soft deleted 19 years after its Start Date.
  • If there are no terms dates and no specified start and end dates, then the course will be excluded from the deletion process.
  • One year after the soft deletion, the course deletion will be made permanent.

Notes:

  • If you wish to override the standard term dates, you need to enter both the start and end dates, AND check the 'Students can only participate....' box.
  • Changing the start and end dates cannot be done if you have the Local Canvas Coordinator (or Unit Admin) roles at the account level – you need to be enrolled on the course with either the Teacher or Course Administrator role.