You starred a template, came back the next day, and now it is nowhere. Canva’s starred items
are real and they are saved — they just live somewhere less obvious than most people expect.
On desktop
- Open Canva and look at the left sidebar of your home screen.
- Click Projects.
- Open the Starred tab at the top of that panel.
Everything you starred appears there — templates, folders, images and whole designs mixed
together. Use the filter at the top right to narrow it to templates only.
On the mobile app
- Tap Projects in the bottom navigation bar.
- Tap the Starred filter chip.
The mobile app shows fewer filters than desktop, so if you starred dozens of items, searching
by name is faster than scrolling.
Why starred templates disappear
Three things explain almost every case:
- You are in a different account. Stars belong to the account that made them.
A personal login and a work login do not share them — this catches people who joined a team
later. - The template was removed by its creator. Canva templates come and go. If a
designer unpublishes one, your star points at nothing. - It was a Pro template and your trial ended. It still appears, but you
cannot use it without watermarks.
Stars are a bookmark, not a backup
This is the part worth internalising: starring does not copy anything into your account. It
saves a pointer. If you rely on a template for recurring work — a monthly report, a weekly
social set — open it once, click Use this template, and rename the copy. Now
it lives in your Projects and cannot vanish.
A folder structure that survives
Once you have more than about twenty saved items, stars stop being useful. Create folders
under Projects — one per recurring job, not per file type. “Monthly invoices” and “Instagram —
March” beat “PDFs” and “Squares” because they match how you actually work.
If you want templates you cannot lose
Templates you buy behave differently: the link copies the design into your own account, so
it stays there whether or not the original is ever republished. That is the practical argument
for a paid set over a starred one when the design is part of your workflow — see our
planners or
Instagram sets for what that looks like.