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Archiving courses

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Docebo module
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  • Administrators

Introduction

Course archiving provides a structured approach to remove outdated or inactive courses from learner-facing pages while preserving all associated course data (including e-commerce transactions), enrollments, and completion records.

Keeping the course library clean and free of obsolete content reduces confusion, improves search accuracy, and supports a disciplined, well-managed training lifecycle.

Only Superadmins can archive courses. This functionality is not available to Power Users. 

Archiving a course

To archive a course, access the Course management area from the Admin menu and locate the course in the list. Click the ellipsis menu at the end of the course row and select Archive. The Archive course pop-up appears.

Checking dependencies

You cannot archive courses with dependencies. A course has dependencies if it is included in a learning plan or linked to an automatic group.

In the pop-up, click Check dependencies to verify whether the course is included in any learning plans or automatic groups.

In the right panel, click the name of a learning plan or group to open it. If needed, remove the course before archiving.

Managing training materials

In the pop-up, the Upload the training material to the Training materials page option is selected by default. This automatically uploads the archived course’s training material to a dedicated folder in the training materials library. 

Training material already in the library is not uploaded again to avoid duplicates. If you disable this option, the training material is permanently deleted and is no longer accessible.

Click Archive now to confirm.

To archive multiple courses, select the checkboxes at the beginning of each course row on the course management page. Click Choose action in the bottom-right corner, select Archive, and then follow the steps for archiving a single course.

Both single-course and bulk archiving are executed as background jobs.

Once a course is archived:

  • The course cannot be restored as an active course.
  • All active enrollments are archived in their current status.
  • Learners can no longer access the course. However, they can still view their progress data and certificates from the My activities page.
  • The course appears in the Archived tab of the Course management page.
  • For Instructor-Led Training (ILT) courses, all past, present, and future sessions and events are canceled when the course is archived.
  • For paid courses, the transactions associated with course purchases are retained.
  • Archiving a course permanently removes all certification records associated with that course.

Notes on training material

  • You can archive up to 20 courses at a time.
  • Some training material types, such as observation checklists cannot be uploaded to the Training materials page and will not be included in the created folder. 
  • Training material is uploaded to the Training materials page using a flat structure. Any existing folder organization within the course is not preserved. All eligible training materials are moved to a single folder created during the course archiving process. 

Power users

When a course is archived it is automatically removed from the resources assigned to a Power User. As a result, this Power User can no longer see, track, or manage the archived course regardless of their assigned permissions

Managing archived courses

All archived courses are listed in the Archived tab of the Course management page. Use the search area to locate specific courses.

Click on Enrollments in the course area to view a summary of enrollments as they were frozen at the time of archiving. Click Training materials to review the list of materials included in the course at the time it was archived.

Click on the ellipsis menu at the end of the course row to perform the following actions:

  • View details: Displays a snapshot of the course’s basic data and configuration:
    • Details: Shows the course’s basic information. Instructors are listed only for e-learning courses.
    • Course additional fields: Displays configured course additional field names and values. This tab is not shown if no course additional fields are configured.
    • Sessions: Only shown for Instructor-Led Training (ILT) courses. Lists session and event details.
  • Check usage: Lists the catalogs, channels, and certificate templates associated with the course at the time of archiving.
  • Delete: Permanently deletes the course in accordance with the platform’s standard deletion behavior for e-learning and ILT courses. All course data is permanently lost, and the course is no longer visible or accessible anywhere in the platform.