# Tool for Forum Cleanup?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/tool-for-forum-cleanup/91450
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [July 3, 2018, 7:45am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/tool-for-forum-cleanup/91450 "2018-07-03T07:45:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Gregory\_Reyes](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Gregory_Reyes)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2018, 7:45am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/tool-for-forum-cleanup/91450/1 "2018-07-03T07:45:26Z")
Hey guys! I’m just wondering if there’s a tool / plug-in that can help me do a sort of “clean-up” for our forum? The idea is to clear out any unnecessary / outdated topics so that users don’t find themselves going back to it. I was also thinking maybe some themes that can give a cleaner look can help as well? Or any plug-in that can help reduce clutter in order to focus on quality discussions or support processes. Any help would be much appreciated!
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### Author:  [@robmc](https://meta.discourse.org/u/robmc)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2018, 8:41am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/tool-for-forum-cleanup/91450/2 "2018-07-03T08:41:07Z")
Happy to try to help, but can you define what you mean by ‘clean-up’ in this case?
One of the strengths of a forum is that relevant content can be found over time and does not have to be recent - the problem, for example of social networks like twitter.
The content will be available for users to search and discover, so it is more helpful to do the work to link & merge related topics as they arise to create better reference content rather than ‘clean up’ afterwards, but it will depend on your community and what content is being created.
One thing you could consider is in Category Settings, you can set `Auto-close topic hours` to close automatically after a certain time, so new arrivals can read the material and reference it but not revive the topic. Have you tried this?
If you want to select which topics are “unnecessary / outdated” you can select them and close them all - there is more information on that here:
> [@Mass close topics?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/mass-close-topics/65831):
>
> Is mass close topics available? If not, I would recommend to add this option.
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### Author:  [@Gregory\_Reyes](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Gregory_Reyes)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2018, 9:16am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/tool-for-forum-cleanup/91450/3 "2018-07-03T09:16:34Z")
Thanks for this! The issue is really more of old topics being revived so we’re trying to lessen this by maybe deleting old topics, hence the “cleanup”. But maybe cleanup is the wrong term. Our main objective is to organize the whole forum in terms of look and function so that support processes are better.
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### Author:  [@robmc](https://meta.discourse.org/u/robmc)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2018, 9:26am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/tool-for-forum-cleanup/91450/4 "2018-07-03T09:26:40Z")
I trust the link answers some of those questions, and maybe adding the auto-close to the category will help to reduce the work going forward
If you have active mods, then you can also use Topic Timers to auto-close, or auto-delete, specific topics if they are unlikely to add to the reference material on the site
This thread is about creating new posts, but it will point you to the place to also select `auto-delete` if you want
> [@Scheduling topics for future publication](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-create-a-timed-topic/60731):
>
> bookmark This guide explains how to use topic timers to schedule a topic for future publication in Discourse. person_raising_hand Required user level: Trust level 4 users or Staff (Admin/Moderator) Discourse allows you to create topics and schedule them for publication at a later date using topic timers. This feature is available to staff (admins and moderators) as well as trust level 4 users. To schedule a topic for future publication: Create a new topic in a private category, as a p…
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### Author:  [@WorldIsMine](https://meta.discourse.org/u/WorldIsMine)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2021, 3:18pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/tool-for-forum-cleanup/91450/5 "2021-01-08T15:18:36Z")
Reviving this as I had a similar question. In my community, virtually everyone deals with sensitive data via PMs. Lots of images, pdfs, documents, etc. The old PMs aren’t needed anymore and I would love the ability to purge old PMs en masse, in case we ever get breached it would get really messy.