Turnitin in Canvas: how to see your report

Does your Canvas assignment actually use Turnitin?

Turnitin is not a built-in part of Canvas. It is a separate tool your school licenses and connects to Canvas assignments, and Turnitin’s own guidance on Canvas integration types shows there is more than one way schools set this up: a newer Standard Assignment experience built on Canvas LTI 1.3, or the older Canvas Plagiarism Framework and Document Processor integrations. Some instructors also turn Turnitin on for one assignment and leave it off for another in the same course.

Signs your submission went through Turnitin usually include:

• The assignment page mentions "originality" or "similarity" checking in its instructions or file requirements.
• After you submit, a colored percentage icon or a grayed-out placeholder icon appears next to your file.
• Your Grades page shows a Similarity Score column alongside your grade for that assignment.

If none of that shows up, the assignment most likely is not running through Turnitin at all — not every Canvas class uses it, and not every assignment inside a Turnitin-enabled class does either.

How to see your Turnitin report in Canvas

When Turnitin is enabled and your instructor allows student access, Turnitin’s student guide for Canvas describes two common paths, depending on your school’s Canvas view:

• Open the assignment, select Submission Details, then select the Similarity Score indicator to open the report in a new tab.
• Or select the Similarity Score indicator directly on the assignment page, if that is the view your school uses.
• You can also open it from the Grades page by finding the assignment and selecting its Similarity Score icon.

That report opens inside Turnitin Feedback Studio, not inside Canvas itself, so make sure pop-ups are allowed for the tab to load. Once you can see it, this walkthrough on reading a Similarity Report covers what the percentage and highlighted matches actually mean.

Why you might not be able to see it at all

A lot of students never see a report, and that is usually not a technical error. Turnitin’s own guidance is direct about it: your instructor "may have prevented students from viewing it" is the exact reason it gives when a student cannot open the report. Turnitin’s instructor-side troubleshooting guide lists three separate settings that control this, and any one of them can hide your report: whether report generation is turned on at all, whether students are allowed to view reports, and whether the report only releases on the due date rather than immediately.

A grayed-out or missing icon can also just mean the report has not finished generating yet, which is normal in the first few minutes after you submit.

What does the Canvas Turnitin exclamation mark mean?

If you see a triangle or exclamation icon instead of a similarity percentage, that is Turnitin flagging an error, not a score. It means Turnitin was not able to generate a report for that file at all. The exact icon can look slightly different depending on which Canvas integration your school uses, but the underlying cause is almost always the same: something about the uploaded file, not your writing.

Turnitin’s own troubleshooting guide for report errors points to a short list of common triggers: a file type Canvas accepts but Turnitin does not (Pages exports and some OpenOffice formats are frequent culprits), a password-protected file, a PDF built by an unusual converter, or a first page that is only an image with no text. If you hit this, converting to a clean DOCX or PDF and resubmitting usually clears it. If it does not, contact your instructor rather than guessing, since only they can see the exact error behind the icon.

Does Turnitin in Canvas have AI detection?

It can, but it is a separate layer from the Similarity Report, not part of it automatically. AI writing detection only runs if your school specifically licenses Turnitin Originality with AI detection turned on, and even then it only works on English (or long-form Spanish and Japanese) submissions between 300 and 30,000 words.

The part students usually get wrong: even when AI detection is running, Turnitin is explicit that AI writing detection reports are not visible to students by default in any integration, Canvas included. It is built as an instructor-facing signal. An instructor who wants to share it with you has to manually download the report and send it to you directly — Canvas will not surface it in your submission view the way it can surface the Similarity Score. For what that score actually means when an instructor does share it, see a real, redacted Turnitin report example showing both the Similarity Report and the separate AI Writing Report.

How long does Turnitin take to process on Canvas?

The timing is set by Turnitin’s own processing queue, not by Canvas, so it matches what Turnitin publishes everywhere else: most first submissions generate a Similarity Report within a few minutes, and Turnitin’s official guidance allows up to 10-15 minutes for uploaded files. Resubmitted or overwritten files can take up to 24 hours, since Turnitin deliberately delays reprocessing so the new draft is not compared against your own previous draft.

If your Canvas assignment is stuck longer than that, the cause is almost always the file itself or an LMS sync delay, not a queue backlog. For the full breakdown of what slows a report down and what to do about it, see how long Turnitin actually takes.

What about Turnitin in Blackboard?

Blackboard schools run the same Turnitin engine, just through a different LMS wrapper. Turnitin’s guidance on Blackboard integration types shows the same split as Canvas: schools can be on an older direct integration or a newer Blackboard Ultra Assignment integration, and the menus you click to reach your Similarity Report differ between them. What does not differ is the underlying logic covered above — your instructor still controls whether report generation is on, whether students can view it, and whether it releases immediately or only after the due date.

If you cannot see a report in Blackboard and want to know what to expect before you submit, the safer move is a private check rather than guessing. See how to check your Turnitin score before submitting for a workflow that does not depend on what your instructor has enabled.

Frequently asked questions