Canvas Not Showing Grades? Here's Why (And How to Actually See Them)

Updated for the current Canvas LMS gradebook

A missing grade in Canvas feels like a glitch, but it almost never is. Canvas has several separate settings that can each independently keep a grade off your screen, and they get confused for each other constantly. Here's what's actually happening in each case, and what you can do about it.

1. The assignment hasn't been graded yet

The simplest reason: nobody's graded it. Canvas only shows a score once an instructor or TA has entered one. If you submitted something and it's just missing from your grades page rather than showing a dash or "not graded," check the assignment page directly, not just the grade summary, since the two can update on slightly different timelines.

2. Your instructor is using a manual posting policy

This is the one that trips people up most. Canvas has a course-level (and assignment-level) setting called a grade posting policy, and it has two modes: automatic, where grades appear the moment they're entered, and manual, where grades stay hidden from students until the instructor actively clicks "Post grades," even if grading finished days ago. If a whole set of assignments in one course looks suspiciously ungraded, this is often why.

3. A grade was posted, then hidden again

Separately from the posting policy, Canvas also lets instructors hide grades that were already visible, for example if a mistake was found and the instructor wants to correct it before students see the updated number. When this happens, the grade, any comments, and the notification about it all disappear from your view until it's reposted.

4. The course or module is locked

If an assignment sits inside a module with prerequisites, or the module itself has a locked availability date, you may not be able to see grading details for it until the lock lifts, even if a score technically exists behind the scenes.

5. You're looking at the wrong grading period

Some schools use multiple grading periods per semester (quarters within a term, for example). Canvas's grade summary page can default to showing only the current period, which will look like missing grades for anything from an earlier period unless you switch the view.

6. Your instructor turned off the total grade column

This one's different from the others: it's not that a grade is hidden, it's that the running total for the whole course (or an assignment group within it) is hidden. Canvas has a specific checkbox for this, separate from posting policies. It's common enough, and different enough from the other reasons here, that it gets its own full breakdown: see why Canvas hides course totals and what to do about it.

What to actually do

1. Check the individual assignment page, not just the grades summary, for a real status (graded, not yet graded, hidden).
2. If several assignments in one course all look ungraded at once, ask about the posting policy before assuming nothing's been graded.
3. Double check you're viewing the right grading period if your school uses them.
4. If the total itself is missing rather than individual scores, that's the "hide totals" setting, not any of the above.