I spent some time searching this site looking for an answer this question, but I’ve only seen where other people have asked for the feature here and here without any real resolution to unlisting old topics in bulk. My organization opens various annual categories for our members throughout year that get hundreds of replies (if not thousands), so it would really, really be beneficial to us if Discourse provided this feature. Is there a workaround for this, or even a timeline as to when the next Discourse update will include an option for bulk unlisting of topics?

It’s already there. Click on a tag or category to get a topic list Click the bullet-list icon to the left of the word “Topic” in the list header. Check the topics you want. Click the :wrench: button that appears in the upper right. Click Unlist Topics.

Thanks, @downey! Just followed your outlined steps, however, after clicking all 718 topics, I’m now getting an error message after clicking “Unlist Topics” – and many of my topics (when I reopen the category in another tab) are not actually unlisted. Any insight on that? [image]

Any errors in /admin/logs or Chrome Debug tools F12?

From the /admin/error logs: [image] And from Chrome Debug/F12: [image]

For the F12, you need to click on the Console tab, as what you took a screenshot of is simply the HTML source that built the page, not what errors may have been reported.

Thanks for clarifying, @cpradio. Here’s what I pulled from the Console tab: [image]

I’m not sure if this will work for 718 topics at once; you might try smaller batches of 20-50 first. I also strongly suggest you set auto-close on that category so all those topics will auto-close after (x) days or (x) days after the last activity. Then this will be basically automatic. That can be done via the category edit dialog.

Thanks for that tip, @codinghorror. We’d like to keep the category (it is in use for several months a year and remains linked in various places so we’re hesitant to outright close it and lose the URL), but we would like to unlist old topics. However, for now I’ll try unlisting in batches.

I’m not proposing that you remove the category – I’m proposing that you set the “auto-close” setting on the category so every newly created topic in that category automatically closes after a certain interval of time.

If we “close” a topic, is that the same as unlisting it – or does it delete?

Possible to unlist old topics in bulk?

Product Support

jpalermo (Josef) May 4, 2016, 8:02pm 5

From the /admin/error logs:

And from Chrome Debug/F12:

Topic		Replies	Views
"make listed" again in the bulk actions Feature completed , bulk-actions	5	1750	May 10, 2017
Negative category count (minus number) after unlisting/deleting UX unlisting	7	1020	February 3, 2021
Setting option to make unlisted topics inaccesible to public Feature unlisting	7	850	September 8, 2023
Automatically unlisting a topic after X days Feature unlisting , topic-timers	5	944	November 3, 2020
Want to delete 'About this Topic' Product Support	8	1947	March 23, 2019

Possible to unlist old topics in bulk?

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