You can archive articles to remove them from your knowledge base. Archived articles are moved to the archived articles list. You can permanently delete articles after they have been archived.
If you need to archive multiple articles at once, see Updating knowledge base articles in bulk.
Archived articles are available to Guide admins only. They can view and restore articles as needed.
To archive an article
- Navigate to the article you want to archive, then click Edit
article in the top menu bar.
- (For Guide Enterprise only), Click Article settings.
- Click Archive article.
You might have to scroll down to see this option.
The article, including any inline images and attachments, are removed from your knowledge base, along with any translations associated with the article. Guide admins can restore or permanently delete archived articles from the archived articles list.
If you need to delete a translated article, see Deleting a translated article.
18 Comments
Link "Deleting a translated article" is broken. Please help to understand how to delete archived article.
Hi Olekssii,
Thanks for letting us know. The link is fixed now!
Not deleting articles completely is absolutely unacceptable. A lot of articles, particularly in the beginning, are created to test things out. A sandbox is only available on the Enterprise plan but not in the Professional plan, and the support is refusing to help.
There has to be a way to get this done?!
When on the edit article screen there is not a drop down for edit article.
I did find a "Delete article" option that is in the lower right hand corner.
Hey Patrick -
Yep, you are correct, "edit article" is a button and not a drop-down. The only drop-down menu indicated above is for "Add."
The screen shot in the article is of the lower right-hand corner, so yes, the "delete article" option is in the lower right hand corner.
Hello - I have 51 articles in my Deleted Articles section - they have been reviewed and no longer apply so I would like to purge them. Is there no way to purge deleted or must I delete 1 at a time from deleted?
UPDATE: I have noticed there is no way to delete them at all... not great...
I don't see "Delete Article" option on the edit article page, neither the "Deleted Articles" section. Is there any setting needed?
My orgnization has quite a few articles we need to DELETE instead of ARCHIVE.
Hi Alex!
Deleting an article is a two-step process. First you'll need to archive it. Once that's gone, go into your Archived articles list in the Guide admin dashboard and click on that article. Once you're in it, you'll see the option to either restore it or delete it. The delete option will be in red at the bottom of the right-hand column.
Thanks Jessie, working now. Cheers
Hi Jessie! After archiving articles, how do you prevent broken links? Thank you!
Hi, how do we 'bulk archive' articles?
I notice we can take many actions in bulk by ticking the checkboxes, but Archiving seems to be laboriously 'one-by-one'?
Hi Bob,
You can archive articles in bulk. Check out this article:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001912187
Hope that helps!
Hi, Thank you for this reply!
Unfortunately, the steps don't work - as the option to bulk archive them is 'greyed out'.
Do they have to have a particular status *before* bulk selecting them for this option to become available?
Hi Nicole Saunders!
Sorry to raise an old thread from the dead, but does archiving an article and then returning it to "active" and publishing it, count as a new article in a section?
I'm trying to find a workaround that will allow us to notify users of meaningful edits to articles they are following without having to follow an entire section.
Thanks for your help!
Hi Marc Binns -
Yes, if you archive and article and then later re-publish it to active, it will send out a notification the same way a brand new article getting published would, so this should work for your purposes.
Thanks for the quick reply Nicole Saunders!
We really want to notify people following a particular article, not via sections. Does this work if someone is following the article being un-archived, or do they need to follow the section that contains the article?
I did read somewhere else that article comments will notify followers, but is it possible to restrict comment permissions to a particular group of users, e.g. Agents?
If that is not possible either, how about if we temporarily enable comments on an article when making a meaningful update, publish the change, then make a comment about the update, and finally disable article comments again?
Thanks again for your time!
How do you recommend users manage broken links once articles have been archived? In my case, the product that I document has undergone significant change and a lot of content has been revised as a result. Often this means that entire articles have become irrelevant and it makes sense to archive them.
I try my best to manage where archived articles have been referenced elsewhere, but the main problem is the hit that our domain authority takes on Google when a large number of 404s are returned in search results from articles that no longer exist. We rely strongly on organic traffic from search engines to deflect support questions, so this becomes a significant challenge.
I have endeavoured to update or write new content overtop of existing articles so that the URLs are maintained as much as possible, but this obviously isn't ideal.
I appreciate any suggestions.
Marc Binns - apologies for the speedy response followed by a delayed one. The logic for notifications for a section should be the same as for an individual article.
Comments are universally on or off; there are not currently any granular permissions available for those. The solution you suggested around turning comments on and then off again is your best workaround.
Brendan O'Driscoll - Google Analytics can help with identifying broken links. See the following article for details: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203664166
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