Canvas Course and Panopto Video Auto-deletion

• Canvas
  • This information is available in the Term column in your course list at canvas.uoregon.edu/courses.
• Panopto
  • Unfortunately, the service doesn’t provide any way to easily determine how long it’s been since your videos have been watched or which ones are slated for deletion.
  • However, only videos in Archived storage are subject to deletion. Videos automatically move from Ready to view to Archived two years after their last viewing. (Then after three years in Archived, they’ll be deleted.) To see videos in Archived storage, go into a course in Canvas, click Panopto Video in that course’s navigation menu, then click Show archived videos.

You may want to save older Canvas course materials or Panopto videos, such as for your professional portfolio or for future use. As you consider saving such materials, please keep the following in mind:

• Remove personal files. Any content that wasn't generated for or in connection with UO work should be removed from UO storage altogether. 
• Follow best practices for records retention. Learn more about managing course records and managing video recordings as records
• Storage costs money. Please be thoughtful about what you keep — especially large files, such as videos — and where you store them. Saving unnecessary files can stretch UO’s storage capacity and cause excess spending. Information Services staff are analyzing usage and costs for all UO storage services and may introduce auto-delete settings for other services soon, in consultation with stakeholders and University Records Management.

Yes. Information Services is setting up automatic email notifications to owners of courses slated for deletion.

• Owners of affected courses will receive a series of emails before a course is deleted.
• Each series of emails will list a single term’s worth of past courses subject to deletion.
• In the run-up to the initial auto-deletions in June 2026, you might receive multiple series of such emails — one about your Spring 2021 courses, another about your Winter 2021 courses, etc.
• After June 2026, each round of quarterly auto-deletions will affect only one term of five-year-old classes at a time, so you’ll get at most one series of email notifications.

• Unfortunately, Panopto currently lacks this functionality, 
• The vendor has expressed an intention to add this capability soon. We will share any updates here.

To save older Canvas course materials for your professional portfolio or future use, you have two options:

• Entire Canvas course: You can export the entire course (excluding student submissions) as a downloadable package that can be imported later into another Canvas course shell.
• Selected course materials: You can selectively download files or folders from the course.

Learn more about best practices for records management of course materials​​​​.

In some cases, it may make sense to preserve an unwatched video longer than five years. Learn more about best practices for records management of videos.

1. From the main Canvas course navigation menu, select Panopto video, then Show archived videos.
2. Find the video you want to save, then use its restore from archive button to request it be moved to Ready to view. Restoration from archive may take up to 48 hours.
3. Once the video appears on the main Panopto Ready to view screen, click the video’s settings button.
4. In the settings window, click the outputs tab and set output options.
5. After downloading the file, close the settings window, then please use the video’s More actions button to delete it from Panopto.

Most course materials shouldn’t be saved for more than five years. 

If you export materials from Canvas or Panopto — such as for your professional portfolio or for future use — please save them in the appropriate UO storage service:

• Dropbox, Microsoft SharePoint or Teams, or Microsoft OneDrive 
  • Please use shared spaces (SharePoint, Teams, or Dropbox team spaces) for content that others may need to access for operations or records retention. 

• No. Once they’ve been permanently deleted, Panopto videos and Canvas courses are unrecoverable.