Fastpath: Manage articles (
) > select articles > bulk actions menu
) > select articles > bulk actions menuFrom an articles list, you can update one or more articles at once using the bulk actions options. For example, you can publish a batch of articles at once or add a labels to several articles.
You can make the following updates using bulk actions:
- Open or close an article for comments
- Archive or restore articles
- Delete articles
- Change author
- (Guide Enterprise only) Change the article owner
- (Guide Professional and Enterprise) Change user permissions
- (Guide Professional and Enterprise) Change labels on articles
- (Guide Enterprise only) Assign or unassign articles
- (Guide Enterprise only) Submit articles for review
- (Guide Enterprise only) Submit articles for approval
- (Guide Enterprise only) Verify or unverify articles
- (Guide Enterprise only) Schedule articles to be published or unpublished
- (Guide Enterprise only) Publish or unpublish articles
To update articles in bulk
- In Guide, click the Manage articles () icon in the sidebar.
- Find the articles you want to update by browsing, searching, or using a new or existing articles list.
- Select one or more articles to update.
You can select a maximum of 30 articles at a time. To select 30 items at once, click the check box beside the number of results at the top.
- Click one of the bulk actions menus at the bottom, then select an option.
The available bulk actions depend on your plan.
- Click to confirm that you'd like to perform the action, or enter your update if necessary.
Some actions require an additional step:
- To assign an article, select a team member and enter a note, then click Assign.
- To change labels: select or deselect the labels you want to add or remove, or enter a new label, then click Change.
For more information, see Updating article labels in bulk.
- To restore an article, select a section for the article, then click Restore.
- To schedule an article to be published or unpublished: select a date, time, and time zone, then click Schedule.
Note: You can select both check boxes to create a publish schedule and unpublish schedule in one action.
The action you choose is applied to all of the selected articles.
17 Comments
I'm trying to figure out how to remove labels in bulk. The instructions above say:
But there is no way to deselect labels. None of the labels are selected when I open the bulk editor. When I check one, I can apply, but I assume that will add it. If I check it and then uncheck it, the Confirm box goes away and I can't do anything.
How can I remove a label in bulk?
Hi Aaron,
Labels that appear on all the selected articles have a selected box with a checkmark. If you deselect that checkbox, the label will be removed from all the selected articles.
Labels that appear on some but not all of the selected articles have a selected box with a slash mark. If you click that box, the slash turns to a checkmark (indicating the label will be added to any selected article that doesn't already have it). If you click it again, the box is deselected (indicating the label will be removed from any selected article that contains it).
I'm going to make that clearer in this article that is specifically about updating labels in bulk, because you are right that it can be hard to figure out.
Hi Jennifer,
Thank you! That's definitely what I would have suspected. Mine aren't doing that. I double checked my articles and verified they have some labels, but when I try to bulk update them, none of the labels that are applied are checked or even have the minus. They are all empty.
Yea, that doesn't sound right. You might have to contact support@zendesk so they can take a closer look at what's going on. Good luck!
Hi all,
For enterprise: why is it that I am able to only use the Article Settings bulk feature for articles that are in "All articles" status in the left hand side? I am unable to use it for "Work in progress", "Ready for review" etc?
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Dominic
Hey Dominic! Sorry for the delayed response. You should be able to take bulk actions on Work in Progress or Ready for review articles. However, there might be some actions that are limited based on the type of article it is. For example, you can't take bulk actions on articles that are language variants of a source article. If you add the parameter Source > Yes to your list, do you see the "Article Settings" menu reappear?
I need to open more than 1.000 records to update the section, one by one, how can I do that using the bulk edit functionality ? it will very helpfull if you can point me to the right direction or either suggest an enhancement to the product to dev team. Thanks.
Hi Felipe,
Unfortunately, there's no way to bulk update sections within Guide. I'd be happy to pass this feedback along to the appropriate team, however, I also encourage you to cross-post your feedback in our Guide Product Feedback forum to provide visibility for other users in need of similar functionality.
Thanks again for taking the time to share this with us!
Hey team,
Is there a way to set a future expiration/retirement date on an article in Zendesk Guide? Let's say that I have information on a marketing promotion that will run March through August.
Is there a way I can set a future expiration date when I make the content live on March 1 that will also automatically retire or unpublish the article after August 31 when the promotion is no longer valid?
Thanks!
Kenneth Nuckols,
Yes, we have just launched a scheduled unpublishing EAP that I think fits your use case. You can read more and sign up to the EAP here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/topics/360001464174
Is the 30 selected articles still the limit? I'd need to touch few hundred articles
Hi Ilkka,
Yes, the 30 article limit remains in place. Depending on what you're trying to do, you may be able to do it via the API and write a script to run all of the API calls for you.
We can try to make some suggestions if you can tell us more about what you're trying to do with your articles.
Thanks Nicole. I need to change article permissions in bulk. I'm familiar with the Guide API and can do this that way. As a feature request, lifting the UI limit would be nice for simple changes.
We'll note that for the appropriate product manager.
I would also like to promote the ability to edit more than 30 articles at once. :)
It would be helpful if we could mass-update the article template via the UI in addition to the other already-available attributes.
Is it currently expected behavior that if you bulk Assign more than one article to a single user that this user receives a separate email for each article? We recently tested this in our instance and it provided one email for each individual article; however, it was confusing because the same message that I had entered in when assigned the article was in each email to the user.
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