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Canvas Collaborations (Known Issue) - Office 365 Collaborations error if there is not a "Canvas" folder

Canvas users might not be able to access Office 365 Collaborations in Canvas if they do not have a folder at the root level of their OneDrive accounts titled "Canvas."

Instead, the user may instead get one of the following messages when attempting to open an Office 365 Collaboration in Canvas: “An unexpected error occurred" or "Your session has expired. please log back in."


Canvas Collaborations page with the error messages above highlighted.

Although there are several possible causes for these error messages, one common one is that the user's Office 365 account doesn't have a folder named "Canvas" (case sensitive, must be capitalized) at the top level and Office 365 cannot create one. 


User's Microsoft OneDrive folder structure opened. A folder titled "Canvas" which was created "About a minute ago" is highlighted.

Various account issues could prevent Office 365 from automatically creating a folder named "Canvas." The most common is that the user already has a folder in that location titled "canvas" (lower case). 

Solution

The user should log in to their University of Wisconsin Office 365 account and verify that there is folder named "Canvas" at the top level of their OneDrive folder. If it's not there, they should create a new folder with that name.

If that doesn't work, the user should contact their campus IT Help Desk for assistance with Office 365.