Archived articles and article history

Ref: C09 · Track: Knowledge Base Admin · Time to complete: ~2 min

Why this matters

Deleting a published article is almost never the right call — links break, history is lost, and if the content is ever needed again you're recreating it from scratch. Archive instead; keep the history intact.

Archive vs Delete

Archive

• Article is removed from the help center (customers don't see it, search doesn't return it).
• Article stays in the admin view, in an Archived status.
• Can be restored with one click.
• History, analytics, comments, version diffs — all preserved.
• Old URLs 404 (or redirect if you've set up a redirect).

Delete

• Permanent. Gone.
• Generally reserved for articles that should never have existed (duplicates, test content, leaked drafts).
• Most agents can't delete — admins only.

Default to archive. Delete only when you're sure you'll never want the content back.

How to archive

1. Open the article.
2. In the action menu, click Archive.
3. Confirm.

It immediately disappears from the public help center. To restore: 1. Book view → filter Status = Archived. 2. Click into the article. 3. Click Restore → set whatever publish status you want.

Article history — the undo you didn't know existed

Every edit to an article is stored. Open any article and click History to see:

• Who edited.
• When.
• What changed (a diff of the body content).
• Every version back to creation.

Reverting

1. Find the version you want to go back to.
2. Click Restore this version.
3. Confirm.
4. The article reverts. You can then re-publish, or keep the restore as a draft.

History is your safety net when someone accidentally overwrites content. It's there — always — unless the article itself is deleted.

How long is history kept

• For live (non-deleted) articles: forever.
• For deleted articles: gone along with the article.
• For archived articles: preserved until the article is deleted.

This is why archive-over-delete matters — archiving keeps your audit trail.

Gotchas

• URL collisions. If you archive Article X and later create a new Article X with the same title, the URL slugs may differ — Zendesk appends a suffix. Be deliberate if you want the old URL back.
• Archiving bulk. Hard cap of 30 at a time (see C11).
• Analytics on archived articles. Views stop accumulating once archived. Historical view counts remain.
• Related/linked articles. Archiving an article that was linked-to leaves broken links in other articles. Do a search before archiving.

Quick check — have you got this?

• You realise an article was published with a typo that got edited correctly, but someone overwrote the correction. How do you get it back?
• You want to hide an article temporarily while the related feature is offline. Archive or unpublish?
• Is archiving reversible?

Related articles

• C06 — Review statuses and publishing rules
• C11 — Bulk-updating up to 30 articles at a time
• C18 — Archiving vs deleting (related: the one-way door)