Advice on "Semi-Archiving" Courses: "Archive Sub-Accounts"? "Archive Terms"?

[mbmacdonald]

I remember seeing a webinar presented by Instructure (maybe a CSM webinar) a few years ago (between 1 and 3 years ago) about doing some rearranging of your Canvas instance to "archive" courses. It did not actually archive them, it just designated older courses as "Archived" basically for the purpose of cleaning up the interface. I can't remember if it involved putting them in an Archive Sub-Account, creating an Archive Term, or both (or something else).

Does anyone remember this? I remember it being a really short webinar, so the process must have been really easy.

If not, does anyone have any advice on this? Do you do anything like this, and why?

[melodyc_lam]

@mbmacdonald I do both -- I create an Archive Term (usually something like 2024-2025 for the school year) and then also Archive Subaccounts (I have 186 schools and put the courses into an archive by school). That way I can clean up the massive term list (we have terms by school because we have 3 different calendar schedules) by moving courses into the Archive Term and the archive subaccount associated with their school, then make sure that our subaccount admins have access to courses if needed just in case there's a need for the content in there by moving the courses into the school archives.

I also conclude enrollments as part of the archive process and remove any links to old blueprints as I also archive blueprints into their own subaccount.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you need more details on the process.

[KCTesterman · Accepted solution]

Hi @mbmacdonald this might help also: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Customer-Success-Newsletters/Term-Consolidation-in-Canvas-Yearly-...

[JasonSimmons]

Hello - I think you are referring to Instructure's offering "Canvas Archiving powered by K16 Solutions". Many Canvas customers are already using this platform to archive their aging content (it helps them expedite WCAG compliance in the process too).

https://www.instructure.com/services/canvas-archiving

https://er.educause.edu/articles/sponsored/2025/3/lms-archiving-fast-tracking-wcag-compliance-at-uc-...