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Archiving Articles

Archiving takes an article off your knowledge base without deleting it. It stays in its category, keeps its revisions, and comes back as a draft whenever you unarchive it.

Rebecca Thompson
Updated by Rebecca Thompson
Table of Contents

Some articles stop being useful but shouldn't disappear. Archiving takes an article off your help center and keeps it, so you can bring it back whenever you want.

Archiving or Deleting?

Deleting moves an article to Recently deleted. You can restore it for a short while, and after that it's gone.

Archiving has no time limit. The article stays in your content list, in the category it was already in, and you can unarchive it whenever you want. It's the right choice for content that's out of date but worth keeping, like a guide to a feature you've replaced.

Not sure which one you need? Work through it below 👇

This is an interactive decision guide. Please view it online.

Might you want to read or restore this article again someday?
Do you need it to stay editable and searchable on the frontend?
Delete it.

It'll sit in Recently deleted for a short while in case you change your mind, then it's gone permanently.

Result
Keep it live and just update it instead.

Archiving makes an article read only, so if you still need to edit and publish it, there's no need to archive at all.

Result
Archive it.

It comes off your help center but stays in its category, read only, ready to unarchive whenever you want it back.

Result

How to Archive an Article

What happens when I archive an article?

  • It comes off your knowledge base. The old URL returns a 404 unless you add a redirect.
  • It drops out of knowledge base search, your sitemap, and your llms.txt file.
  • It becomes read only. It takes no edits, no new comments, and no AI suggestions until you unarchive it.
  • It stays in its category and keeps its position, tags, permissions, revisions, and article ID.
  • Nobody can read it on the frontend, including your own team while logged in. Read it in the dashboard instead.
  • If you use multilingual, every language is archived, not only the one you're looking at.

From the Content View

  1. Hover over the article you want to archive
  2. Click the Archive icon Archive icon on the right of the row
  3. Add a reason if you want one
  4. Choose where to redirect visitors, if the article is live
  5. Click Archive article

From the Article Editor

  1. Open the article
  2. Click the more options menu in the top right
  3. Select Archive article
  4. Click Archive article again to confirm
Article editor dropdown menu highlighting the Archive article option.
The reason is optional and holds up to 500 characters. Readers never see it. It shows up in Quick look for whoever finds the article later, so a line like "Superseded by the new billing guide" saves someone a guess.

Redirecting Visitors

When you archive a single live article, the dialog offers to send its visitors somewhere else. Search for the article that replaces it and pick it.

It's saved as a temporary redirect. Head to Settings > Redirects whenever you want to remove it. Temporary rather than permanent, because archiving can be undone, and a permanent redirect sticks around in browsers long after the article comes back.

Without a redirect, anyone who bookmarked the old URL or found it in Google gets a 404.

The redirect is only offered for one live article at a time. A redirect points one URL at one destination, so there's nothing sensible to offer when you're archiving nine articles at once.

Archiving Several Articles at Once

  1. Select the articles in the Content view
  2. Click Archive in the selection bar
  3. Check how many of them are live in the dialog
  4. Click Archive articles
Modal window with options to add a reason and set redirects before archiving articles.
Worth knowing before you select everything. Unarchiving brings articles back as drafts, so putting 300 published articles back means publishing 300 articles again. The statuses they had aren't remembered.
Archiving several live articles at once? Head to Settings > Redirects afterwards to manually point any URLs you care about to their replacements.

Finding Archived Articles

Archived articles stay in their category, folded into a row that says how many there are. Click 3 archived, or however many you have, to show them.

You can also filter the Content view by the Archived status to see all of them in one list.

Click Quick look on any archived row to read the article, along with the reason it was archived, who archived it, and when.

Unarchiving an Article

  1. Find the archived article, either in its category or under the Archived filter
  2. Click Quick look
  3. Click Unarchive
It comes back as a Draft, in the category it was archived from, and it's editable again. It doesn't return to the status it had before, so publish it again if it should go back on your help center. There's more on what each status does in Understanding Article Statuses.

Who Can Archive

Action

What you need

Archive a draft

Permission to manage the article

Archive a published or private article

Publish permission, because it takes a page off your help center

Archive several at once

Bulk delete permission, plus publish permission if anything selected is live

Unarchive

Permission to manage the article. Nothing becomes public, so no publish permission needed

Archiving with AI Assistants and the API

Our MCP server has three tools for this: archive_article, unarchive_article, and list_archived_articles. The rules are the same as in the dashboard, so archiving a live article still needs publish permission, and an archived article refuses edits until it's brought back.

In the API, every article carries is_archived, and an archived one also carries archived_at, archived_by, and archive_reason. Editing an archived article returns a 409 until you unarchive it.

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