You can reorder all the articles in a section, all the sections in a category, and all the categories in the Help Center. You can move articles, sections, and categories manually, and you can sort articles in a section automatically, by date or alphabetically.
Topics covered in this article:
Related article:
Manually changing the order of articles, sections, and categories
You can manually change the order of the articles, sections, and categories in your knowledge base.
To manually change the order of articles, sections, or categories
- In Guide, click the Arrange content (
) icon in the sidebar.
- In the Arrange articles page, click the name of the category where you want to reorder the sections, or drill down to a section where you want to reorder articles.
- Position your cursor
over the grabber at the end of the
item
you want to reorder,
then drag
it
to another position
within
the category or
section.
You cannot reorder articles in sections where the Order articles by option for the section is set to creation date or alphabetically. The Order articles by option for the section must be set manual.
Your changes are automatically saved and updated in your Help Center.
Sorting articles in a section
In addition to manually reordering articles as described in the section above, you can sort articles in a section automatically. For example, you can set articles to appear by date or alphabetically.
To sort articles in a section
- Do
one of the following to edit the section:
-
In Help Center, navigate to the section you want to sort, then click
Edit section in the top menu bar.
-
In Guide Admin, click the Arrange content (
) icon in the sidebar and drill down to the section you want to sort. Click the options menu at the end of the section title, then select Edit section.
-
In Help Center, navigate to the section you want to sort, then click
Edit section in the top menu bar.
- Click the
Order articles by
field, then select
an
option.
- Click Update.
21 Comments
Hi there,
I have a question for Enterprise users. I am in need of a mass re-structure of my help site. I am fairly new to Zendesk and my company. I want to re-organize articles and sections/delete some, move others etc. However, I want to do it slowly (not all at once.) I want to make changes and save those changes but not impact what the end-user is seeing. Essentially I want to create a new theme (with the newly organized categories/sections and articles then set it as live and have it update at once. .
How would I go about that? FYI - I know how to move them around on the arrange content side, but I need to make changes not "all at once"
Thanks!
Allison
Hi Allison,
When you make changes to an already published article, it will immediately be updated on your customer-facing Help Center. Your end-users will be able to see the changes made on an article.
You may create unpublished copies of each article while you are still rearranging your knowledge base content. You can then just delete all published articles, and publish the new ones once everything's set and ready.
You may also want to consider setting up your Sandbox. This will require you to export/import your help center data between your main instance and your sandbox.
Hope this helps. Thanks!
Thanks, Gab!
That is what I have been hearing is the best way to re-organize my help center content (duplicate articles).
I have set up SANDBOX but to my understanding it is helpful mainly for coding/layout and not the actual content of the articles. IE: I wanted to create a theme in SANDBOX and set it as live to the production instance but that is not possible.
It would be nice to not have to duplicate the articles when I am re-categorizing them but seems like that is the best way to do so at this point in time.
Hi there,
I'm trying to reorder the knowledge base sections and articles, and I can't see the same order on mobile.
I double checked, the "Order articles by" setting is set to "Manually" in all sections. I can drag and drop both the sections and articles to my preferred order, and I see them rearranged properly in the knowledge base online, but there is a seemingly random order displayed on my mobile.
Can you please give me a hint what should I do to make sure the sections and articles are displayed in the same order on both my computer and mobile device?
Thanks in advance!
G
Hi Gina,
This can sometimes occur if your Help Center has been altered by any sort of custom code. I would recommend temporarily switching over to the default Copenhagen theme and then reloading your Help Center on your mobile device to see if the order is correct.
More information can be found in our Changing the live theme or your Help Center documentation.
It may also be worth testing from another mobile device to see if there's a caching issue.
Let us know if you continue to experience issues :)
Hey Brett,
Thanks for the quick response!
We have checked it on multiple devices, both iOS and Android show the same result (= random order compared to what I see on my computer).
We do have the Copenhagen theme activated, with no customization.
I just noticed though, we also have the Mobile Layout integration enabled currently. I'm a bit worried to disable that to test, because as I read, it's something we can't re-enable once it's disabled.
Can Mobile Layout be the root cause of the problem of seeing different section / article orders, at all?
I really appreciate your help!
G
Hi Gina,
Appreciate the update :)
This certainly can be and is most likely caused from using the Mobile Layout as that is a feature that is no longer supported. You are correct and if this option is toggled off it cannot be reverted. The mobile layout has been deprecated in favor of the responsive default Copenhagen theme. I'd recommend taking a look at the following article for additional information: Using the Help Center mobile layout on devices
Please let me know if you have additional questions or concerns as I'll be happy to assist further.
Cheers!
Hi Brett,
Sorry for the late response!
I disabled the Mobile Layout and saved the updates, cleared all cache on my phone, and asked others to double check it too. There is still a random order displayed on mobile, not the one I set for the Knowledge Base in Arrange content and can see online.
Do you have any other idea what else I might miss?
Thank you!
G
Hey, Gina!
I'm going to email you to start a ticket on this issue. It would be great to get a deeper look at your Guide settings. Keep an eye out for that!
Hi Ricky,
I have not received an email from you yet. Have you got a chance to send one already?
Looking forward to find a solution to this issue together! Thanks for your help!
Cheers,
Gina
Can you order articles alphabetically by title but Z-A?
Hey Aswin!
As far as I can tell, the "Alphabetically by title" option only goes A-Z, so you'd need to order your articles manually if you wanted them arranged Z-A.
We support multiple languages, is it possible to order the articles separately for each language. For now it seems like the order is copied from the source language (which doesn't make sense in the other languages if you order alphabetically).
Hello Lauren,
Thanks for your message!
If you are configuring the order of your articles within the help center, your options are as follows:
These can be set at the section level.
Regarding alphabetical order, the articles within the given section will display in alphabetical order based on the first letter of the first word in the localization that is displayed to the end user. So, if you have two articles - the first named "one" and the second named "two" - and you have both English and Spanish translations of those articles, the order in which they present alphabetically will switch, depending on which localization is set in the browser:
So it's not so much that the order is copied from the source language, as the order is based on what you deem appropriate.
If the ordering methods we have available don't suit your needs, you can always customize your help center with custom code to your preference!
Hopefully this sheds some light on things!
Thanks for your response Joe!
Would you have examples of this custom code you mention? If not, could you point me in the direction of some examples, maybe?
Hey Lauren -
Zendesk support agents cannot provide custom code, but the community is generally pretty helpful with it. You can post a question in the Guide Themes and Customization topic in the community and someone over there will usually be able to jump in and offer some examples.
Hello!
How can I rearrange the topics? I tried drag-and-dropping and it looks like it's working, but when I go on the page nothing's changed.

Sorry for the big screenshots!
Hey Constantino -
Are you hitting the "save" button in the upper right-hand corner after re-arranging? It's in kind of a weird spot so it's easy to miss.
Hi Nicole,
Yup, as you can see in the screenshot the button is grey, whereas when you make any change it becomes blue.
When I refresh the topics go back in the old order :(
Hey Costantino,
I'm going to create a ticket on your behalf so our Customer Advocacy team can dig into this further.
You'll receive a follow-up email shortly stating your ticket has been created.
Cheers!
Articles can be arranged alphabetically. Sections can be arranged alphabetically. Categories Cannot be arranged in any way other than manual.

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