Track and download attendance reports

Owned by Kiruthika Ragupathi
Last updated: 22 Feb 2023
3 min read

Canvas allows you to mark student attendance and download attendance via Attendance in your course navigation menu. 

Take Attendance

  1. Go to Attendance in your Course Navigation menu.
  2. You may use either the List View tab (displays all students in a list format) or the Class View tab (displays a seating chart format) to take attendance. 
  3. The current date is shown by default. To mark attendance for a different date, use the arrow icons next to the date or use the Calendar icon to select a date.

  4. Now, click on the attendance icons between the photos and names of your students to toggle between the icons. Select the appropriate icon to mark attendance. You may also use the MARK ALL PRESENT button. 

    Icon

    		Description

    		To mark a student who is present and on time to class.

    		To mark the student who is absent from class.

    		To mark the student who is late for class.

    		To unmark the attendance status (default icon).

Download Attendance reports

You can review attendance reports for students in your course using the Attendance report option in Canvas.

  1. Go to Attendance in your Course Navigation menu.
  2. Click on the Settings icon from and select Attendance Report.
  3. Specify your dates, and then click RUN REPORT. There are three options that you can use to download the reports:
    • Specify the same Start date and End Date, the report will be generated for every class. This option is useful if you maintain an Excel attendance sheet outside of Canvas. Copy the column M from your downloaded report and paste into your Excel attendance sheet. 

    • Specify a date range for the report. This is useful, if you want to look at attendance reports for specific period (e.g., weeks 1-7; weeks 8-13)

    • Leave the date fields blanks, the report will be generated for the entire course.

  4. The report is sent to your email and can be downloaded as a (CSV) file.

  5. You may need to use the Insert Pivot Table option in downloaded Excel report to quickly get a tabulation of the attendance by Dates. Follow the steps below:

    1. Select the entire sheet of the downloaded CSV report or you may simply select all the columns in the sheet.

    2. Click on Insert > Pivot Table.

    3.  Now select New worksheet option and click ok.

    4. From the Pivot Table fields on your, drag Student Name into Rows; drag Class Date into Columns; and drag Attendance into Values to achieve the desired result.
      (      See a sample screenshot)