Moving posts to a new or existing topic

[Discourse]

This guide explains how to move posts to a new or existing topic, or to a new personal message in Discourse. This feature helps keep discussions on topic and allows for moving public discussions to private support systems.

Required user level: Trust level 4 users or Staff (Administrators and Moderators)

Discourse provides users with trust level 4 and staff members with the ability to move posts from one topic to another. This feature is useful for maintaining focused discussions and transferring public conversations to private support channels when necessary. Here’s how to use this feature effectively.

Selecting posts to move

1. Click the admin wrench icon in the topic you want to move posts from.
2. Click the “Select Posts” button.
3. Choose the specific posts you want to move by clicking on them.
   
   

Choosing the destination for the posts

After selecting the posts, click the “move to” button. A modal window will appear, offering three options for moving the posts:

1. Move to a new topic
2. Move to an existing topic
3. Move to a new message

Moving to a new topic

To create a new topic with the selected posts:

1. Enter a title for the new topic.
2. Optionally, select a category and add tags.
3. Click “Create Topic” to complete the move.
   
   

Moving to an existing topic

To move the selected posts to an already existing topic:

1. Search for the destination topic by its title or ID in the search box.
2. Alternatively, paste the URL of the destination topic into the search box.
3. Select the appropriate topic from the search results.

When moving posts to an existing topic, they will be appended to the end of the post stream by default. However, you can check the “preserve chronological order after merging” option to insert the posts at their corresponding chronological positions within the destination topic.

Moving to a new message

This option is only available for administrators.

To create a new personal message with the selected posts:

1. Enter a title for the new message.
2. Optionally, add tags to the message.
3. Click “Create Message” to complete the move.
   
   

Post-move notification

After moving the posts, a small action post will be added to the original topic, notifying users about the move:

Important note

It’s not possible to rearrange posts within the same topic using this feature. If you need to change the order of posts in a single topic, you can use a workaround:

1. Move the posts to an intermediate topic.
2. Then move them back to the original topic.

This process will allow you to change the order of posts within a single topic.

Last edited by @JammyDodger 2024-07-31T08:06:24Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-07-31T06:19:49Z

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