Your inbox in Canvas is for communicating with your students. This has the same function as a normal email. The Inbox is split into two panels and displays messages chronologically. You can view and reply to conversations and sort them by course or inbox type.
Your inbox is located on the left hand side of the page.
Your inbox is the best way to communicate with your students both individually and or collectively as a class group. A couple of things to note
- If you right-click or option-click on the Inbox link, you can open your Inbox in a new browser tab to keep it handy while you are doing other tasks in Canvas.
- Users display in the Inbox once they have an active enrollment in the course, and users cannot join a course unless it is published.
- Once a course has concluded and its term date has passed, you can no longer message students in that course.
In Global Navigation, click the Inbox link.
If the Inbox link includes a numbered indicator, the indicator shows how many unread messages. you have in your Inbox. Once you read the new messages, the indicator will disappear.
View Toolbar
The toolbar includes global message options. To load conversations, filter your messages by course or group [1] and type [2]. Filtering by type lets you filter messages by Inbox, Unread, Starred, Sent, Archived, and Submission Comments. You can compose a message at any time using the compose icon [3]. You can also search for conversations by user in the Search by user field [4].
Once you have selected a conversation, you can use the other options in the toolbar to:
- Reply to a conversation
- Reply-all to a conversation
- Archive a conversation
- Delete a conversation
- Forward, mark a conversation as read or unread, and star conversations
View Inbox Panels
Conversations for your selected course and Inbox filter appear in the left Inbox panel.
View Conversations
The Inbox is organized chronologically from newest to oldest with the newest conversations appearing on top [1] and the older conversations at the bottom.
You can manually mark a conversation as read or unread by hovering over the conversation and clicking the circle to the left of the conversation [2]. To start a conversation, hover over the conversation and click the star to the right of the conversation [3].
View Conversation Thread
When you select a conversation [1], all messages in the conversations thread appear in the right Inbox panel [2].
Manage Conversation Thread
Within each conversation, you can reply, reply-all, forward, or delete the entire conversation thread [1]. You can also hover over an individual message and use the same commands within the individual message [2].
Select Multiple Conversations
To select multiple messages to archive, delete, mark as read, mark as unread, or star, click the check box for each message [1]. You can also press the command key (Mac) or the control key (Windows) while clicking each message you want to select. In the Inbox toolbar [2], click the desired option.
To select all messages, click the command + A keys (Mac) or the control + A keys (Windows).
To select a range of messages, click the first message you want to select, hold down the Shift key, and then click the last message you want to select. All messages between the first and the last messages will be selected.
Note: You can also click the message check box or use the same keyboard command to deselect a message.