Canvas quiz answers: how to see them after you submit

How do I see my Canvas quiz answers after I submit?

To see your Canvas quiz answers, open the quiz and select your attempt. Canvas then shows your responses, and the correct answers, only as far as your instructor’s result settings allow. If something is hidden, Classic Quizzes prints a message on the page that names the setting behind it.

Classic Quizzes: open the quiz from Quizzes, Assignments or Modules. Your submitted attempt opens on the quiz page. If you took it more than once, the Attempt History table lists every attempt with its score. Select one to open it. What you see depends on two instructor settings. One controls whether you see your own responses, with incorrect questions marked. The other controls whether you see the correct answers. Instructure shows the student view in its Classic Quizzes results guide.

New Quizzes: open the quiz and choose a completed attempt. By default students can see all of their results. If your instructor turned on Hide results from students, you see only the parts they switched back on: questions, your responses, feedback, whether each response was correct, the correct answer, points possible and points awarded. Each part can also have its own release date. The options are in Instructure’s New Quizzes results guide.

Not sure which one your course uses? New Quizzes runs as a separate tool inside Canvas, so its results page looks different from the Classic one. The settings and messages below are specific to each.

What does “Correct answers are hidden” mean in Canvas?

When Classic Quizzes hides something, it prints a short message where the answers would be. We matched each message to the rule that prints it in the Classic Quizzes code of open-source Canvas, last checked on October 20, 2026. Match the message on your screen to the row:

Two of these rules surprise people. With Only Once After Each Attempt on and correct answers enabled, Canvas ignores the show and hide dates and shows the correct answers during that one view, so read them before you leave the page. And none of these messages say anything about whether your quiz was submitted. A score or an attempt in the list is the proof of submission.

What does “Quiz results are protected for this quiz” mean?

It means your instructor has limited when you can see your own responses, and Canvas is telling you which limit applies. Classic Quizzes prints one of three versions, which we matched to the rules in open-source Canvas. “Can be viewed a single time immediately after submission” means the quiz is set to Only Once After Each Attempt and you have used that view. “Not visible to students until they have submitted their last attempt” means your responses open after your final allowed attempt. “Not visible to students.” on its own means responses are switched off, or your school locks quiz results after the course ends.

None of the three means your quiz failed to submit. A score or an attempt in the Attempt History table is the proof that it went in. If you need the responses to study from, ask your instructor whether they will release them.

Why are my Canvas quiz results or score not showing?

Canvas quiz results or a score usually go missing because the grade has not been posted yet, a question is waiting for hand grading, or the quiz’s settings hide part of the results. Instructure’s student guide says: “If your instructor has hidden your quiz grades, your results will be unavailable until grades are posted.” Match what you see to the table below:

Once the score is posted, you can see what a quiz score does to your Canvas grade with our free calculator. Canvas also has What-If grades on your Grades page: type a pretend score and Canvas recalculates your grade, visible only to you.

On a Classic quiz there is one more clue. In the sidebar template of open-source Canvas, the Current Score and Kept Score rows are drawn only after the grade is posted, so a sidebar that shows your time but no score points to an unposted grade. We read that template on October 20, 2026.

If Canvas shows a submitted attempt in the Attempt History table, the quiz went in. A missing score is a visibility question, so retaking the quiz is not the fix. If the whole course total is hidden too, see why your Canvas total grade is hidden.

What does a “muted” or hidden quiz grade mean?

“Muted” is the older word for a grade that is hidden from students. Canvas now handles this with a posting policy. Under an automatic policy, a score appears as soon as it is graded. Under a manual policy, scores stay hidden until the instructor posts them, either for one assignment or for the whole course.

The old word has not disappeared. In the open-source Canvas code, an assignment still carries a muted flag next to its post policy, and assignments set up for anonymous or moderated grading are switched to manual posting automatically. We read this in Canvas’s assignment model on October 20, 2026. That is why older guides and forum posts still say “muted”.

Quiz results and the gradebook are separate controls. Instructure notes that hiding results in New Quizzes “does not apply to viewing scores in the Gradebook”; an instructor who wants the score hidden there too has to use a posting policy. So two mixed cases are normal:

• You can see the score but not the answers. The grade is posted, and the quiz’s result settings still hide responses or correct answers.
• You can see the answers but not the score. The quiz shows results, and the grade in Grades is waiting to be posted.

Neither case means your attempt was lost, and you do not need to do anything. If grades for the rest of the class are out and yours is still hidden, send the message below.

What is the Kept Score in Canvas, and which attempt counts?

The Kept Score is the quiz score Canvas records in your gradebook. For repeated attempts, Instructure’s student guide says it “is assigned by your instructor and can either be your latest quiz attempt score, the highest quiz score, or the average of all your scores.” It appears at the bottom of the submission details in the quiz sidebar once the grade is posted.

If the quiz allows more than one attempt, the score on one attempt is not necessarily the one in your gradebook. Classic Quizzes has a Quiz Score to Keep setting: Highest (the default for a new quiz), Latest or Average. Average is the plain mean of every attempt, rounded to two decimal places. Say a 20-point quiz allows three attempts and you score 14, then 18, then 15:

Students cannot see the setting itself, but you can work it out once the grade is posted: the sidebar shows a Kept Score, and the Attempt History table labels one attempt KEPT. If Kept Score matches your best attempt, the quiz is on Highest; if it matches no attempt, it is Average. Essay and file-upload questions wait for manual grading (“Some questions not yet graded”), so the total can still rise.

For what Canvas does when a quiz’s time limit runs out, see our guide What happens when a Canvas quiz time limit runs out?

Can I change my Canvas quiz answers after I submit?

Not on your own. In Instructure’s guides, extra attempts and reopened attempts are things an instructor sets up. If the quiz allows more than one attempt, start a new attempt, and the Kept Score rule above decides which score counts. If it does not, ask your instructor. Assignments work differently: Canvas has no unsubmit button, and a resubmission is a new attempt your instructor can still compare with the first (can you unsubmit on Canvas? and what happens when you resubmit).

In Classic Quizzes, your instructor can give you extra attempts from the Moderate Quiz page, and Instructure notes that when extra attempts are given this way, “Canvas keeps the highest quiz score” (extra attempts guide). In New Quizzes, your instructor can reopen your most recent attempt, and Instructure says “previously recorded responses are retained and the quiz timer resumes from its remaining time from the previous submission” (New Quizzes moderation guide).

When you ask, name the quiz, the attempt and the question you want to fix. The message template below works for this too.

How do I save or print my Canvas quiz results?

Canvas has a Print Grades button on the Grades page, according to Instructure’s student guide. That prints your scores, not the questions. For the quiz itself, open the attempt while the results are showing and use your browser’s print command (Ctrl+P on Windows, Command+P on a Mac). Choose Save as PDF as the printer to keep a file.

• Results shown once? On a quiz set to Only Once After Each Attempt, save the page during that first view. When you leave it, the results are gone for that attempt.
• A release date on screen? Save the page after the correct answers appear, so the PDF has them.
• Answers hidden? The PDF shows only what Canvas shows you. Hidden correct answers do not appear in a printout.

Keep the copy for your own studying. Many courses treat sharing quiz questions as an integrity matter, so check your syllabus before you pass a file on.

Is there a Canvas quiz answer key?

No. There is no answer key a student can download for a Canvas quiz, and a list of “Canvas quiz answers” from a search is not your quiz. Canvas question groups can draw a different set of questions for each student, and formula (calculated) questions generate different numbers for each student, so two people taking “the same” quiz can be answering different items. We checked both behaviors against the Classic Quizzes code in open-source Canvas on October 19, 2026. Instructors can also turn on Shuffle Answers, which Instructure describes as a way to “shuffle (randomize) answers,” so even the order of the choices can differ from a classmate’s screen.

The answers you can trust are the ones Canvas releases to you. Instructure’s student guide puts it plainly: “As a student, you can see different types of quiz results, depending on your instructor’s preference,” and “Some instructors will not allow you to view your quiz results at all.” If the message on your screen gives a date, the correct answers appear then. If it does not, ask your instructor or go to office hours.

The same goes for a Kognity assignment your Canvas course links to: Kognity releases its own answers when your teacher allows it. See Kognity answers and the answer key.

What to send your instructor

A message that quotes the screen gets answered faster:

For [quiz title], I submitted attempt 2 at 9:14 pm on Oct 12. The quiz page says “Correct answers are hidden.” Will the correct answers be released after the due date?

If the message says answers appear after your last attempt, you do not need to send anything.

Where Silent Student fits

We make Silent Student, a desktop app for Mac and Windows that works Canvas quizzes and assignments in your own account. This page covers the results Canvas releases to you after you submit, which the app does not change. What the app does on Canvas quizzes, what it leaves for you, and what Instructure’s Acceptable Use Policy says are on Silent Student for Canvas. Other tools are compared in the best AI for Canvas quizzes and assignments. Browser extensions for Canvas quizzes are in Canvas quiz answers extensions compared. One of them, Canvas Quiz Solver, shows an answer under each quiz question; our Canvas Quiz Solver review covers its price and how it compares. Plans start at $11.99 a month (see Silent Student pricing).

Sources

Every quotation on this page was re-read against its source on October 20, 2026.

• Instructure Community, How do I view quiz results as a student? (Classic Quizzes)
• Instructure Community, How do I view my quiz results as a student in New Quizzes?
• Instructure Community, How do I manage quiz results in New Quizzes?
• Instructure Community, How do I use the icons and colors in the Grades page?
• Instructure Community, How do I view my grades in a current course?
• Canvas LMS source, quizzes_helper.rb (result and correct-answer messages)
• Canvas LMS source, _quiz_right_side.html.erb (Current Score and Kept Score rows)
• Canvas LMS source, abstract_assignment.rb (muted flag and post policy)
• Instructure Community, Once I publish a quiz, how can I give my students extra attempts?
• Instructure Community, How do I moderate a student’s quiz attempt in New Quizzes?
• Instructure Community, What options can I set in a quiz?