Search in Canvas

Search is a powerful time saver. It helps you find content across your Canvas subjects, including pages, files, assignments, announcements, and more, without having to dig through modules or menus. You can search within a single subject or across all your enrolled subjects at once.

When to use Search

Use Atomic Search when you want to: 

• Quickly locate content in a subject without clicking through multiple pages. 
• Check whether a resource or file has already been added or linked. 
• Compare content across multiple subjects. 
• Understand how students are interacting with subject content. 

What content can be searched?

Atomic Search indexes a wide range of Canvas content, including:

Content type	Academics can search	Students can search
Pages	All content	Published only
Files (PDF, DOCX)	All files	Only if linked and published
Assignments	All assignments	If available and published
Quizzes	Yes, including questions	Not the questions
Announcements	Yes	Yes
Discussions	Yes	Title and prompt only
Syllabus	Yes	Yes
Modules	All content	Visible items only
URLs	If embedded in modules	If embedded and accessible
External Tools (titles)	Yes	If visible
Videos (titles only)	Yes	Yes
External Pages	If inserted in modules	If inserted and accessible

What you see in the results depends on your role in Canvas. For example, students will only see published and accessible content, while teaching staff may also see unpublished items or hidden content. 

How to use Search in Canvas

Search lets you find pages, files, and other content across your Canvas subjects and is available from both individual subjects and your global Canvas navigation dashboard. Each result displays the title, content type (e.g. Page, Assignment), course location, and a snippet showing where your search term appears, helping you quickly assess relevance. 

From a subject

1. Open the Canvas subject. 
2. Click Search in the left-hand menu. 
3. Type your keywords and press Enter. 
4. Use filters to refine results. 
5. Click a result to open it. 

Across all subjects

1. Click the Search icon in the global navigation bar. 
2. Enter your keywords and press Enter. 
3. Tick Search all courses to include all your enrolled subjects. 
4. Use filters as needed. 

Understanding your search results

After entering a keyword or phrase, your search results will appear in a list below the search bar.

Each result shows:

• The title of the item (e.g. page, file, quiz) 
• The content type (e.g. Page, File, Module) 
• The subject the item belongs to 
• A short snippet of text showing where your search term appears 

Use Search filters to refine results

Use filters to narrow your results and save time. These tools help you focus on the right term, content type, or course.

The filters available will depend on whether you’re searching from inside a subject or using global search from the dashboard.

Filter	Where it’s available	What it does
All terms	Global search only	Filter results by teaching session (e.g. Autumn 2024). Not available inside a course.
All types	Global and in-subject	Filter by content type (e.g. Pages, Files). The options will vary based on your results.
Relevance/Recency	Global and in-subject	Sort results by how closely they match your keywords (relevance), or by most recently updated (recency).
Current course/My courses	Global and in-subject	Switch between searching within just the current subject (Current Course) or across all subjects you’re enrolled in (My Courses).

Tips for better searching

Use these search techniques to improve your results and find content more efficiently in Search.

• Use keywords: enter a single word like resource, to find items that include that term anywhere in the content.
• Use quotation marks: “assessment overview” to find results that match the full phase exactly.
• Use wildcards: add an asterisk ( * ) after part of a word to include related terms. Bio* finds biology, biological, biochemical.

Reindex a subject manually (optional)

Search updates content automatically every 10 hours, but you can force an update manually if content isn’t appearing in searches or if you’ve recently added or changed content.

To reindex a subject:

1. Go to the Search tab in the subject menu.
2. Click the three-dot menu in the top right corner.
3. Select Reindex Course from the dropdown list.

Note: Reindexing usually completes in a few minutes.

View Search analytics

Search analytics give you insight into what students are trying to find. This can highlight confusing terms, missing links, or areas where students expect to find more detail. Reviewing top searches may help you tweak instructions, improve navigation, or spot patterns in student thinking. You can view: 

Report view

• Top 10 Phrases: Most common search terms from the last 7 days (default view) 
• Number of Searches: How often each term was searched 
• You can filter by a specific time frame or view All-time data

Graph view

• Displays the number of searches per day over the past 100 days 
• X-axis = Date 
• Y-axis = Number of searches 
• Hover over a day to see the top 5 search terms used that day

Export data

You can export a CSV of all search terms using the Save search results option in the three-dot menu. 

Note: Analytics are only visible to staff. 

What do students see?

Students can search content that is: 

• Published 
• Linked from a module or page 
• Not restricted by availability dates or module requirements 
• From a subject they are enrolled in 

Students cannot search: 

• Unpublished or hidden content 
• Files or pages that are not linked anywhere (also known as ‘dead content’) 
• Quiz questions or answers 

Results show titles, file types, and snippets of matched text. Students can click results to open the linked Canvas item.