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Advanced Content Authoring and Reporting - Importing a Pressbooks Thin Common Cartridge file into your Canvas course
Pressbooks can be used to author and host basic course content with interactivity as well as more advanced content authoring and reporting (ACAR) features (such as H5P activities, Hypothes.is annotations and reporting).
If you're interested in these advanced content authoring and reporting features, we highly recommended requesting a consultation from the Learn@UW-Madison team to help you get started.
This document describes how an instructor can import a Pressbooks Common Cartridge file into a Canvas course.
After you’ve downloaded your interactive Pressbook as a .zip file (as described in Advanced Content Authoring and Reporting - How to export a Pressbook as a Thin Common Cartridge for use in Canvas , you need to import it to your Canvas course:
- Log in to Canvas.
- Navigate to the Canvas course you’d like to add your Pressbooks content to.
- Click on Settings from the course navigation.
- Click on Import Course Content:
- Select Common Cartridge 1.x package from the content type drop-down menu:
- Next to Source, click the Choose File button:
- Select the .zip file you downloaded from Pressbooks as outlined in the previous KB article Advanced Content Authoring and Reporting - How to export a Pressbook as a Thin Common Cartridge for use in Canvas .
- Select either the All content to import everything or Select specific content to choose which parts of your Pressbook to import.
- If you chose All content, click the Import button:
Your material will import into Canvas. If your book has a lot of material, it could take a few minutes. You can see the progress under Current Jobs. - If you chose Select specific content, click the Import button:
Under Current Jobs you will see your Pressbooks material import. Once completed, you will see a Select Content button. Click it:
A Select Content window will open, which shows what parts of your Pressbook are available to import. Click the checkbox for the pieces you want to import and click Select Content:
The Common Cartridge listed under Current Jobs progress bar will complete. The Select Content button will turn to a green completed notification

If you would like to push grades from the interactive (H5P) activities within your Pressbook, you will want to review Advanced Content Authoring and Reporting - Manually pushing a grade from Pressbooks to the Canvas gradebook and setting up auto-sync .