Old Courses

[jphillips27]

How do I unpublish an old course?  When I click on the older course & view it, the publish vs. unpublish buttons are no longer available.

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @phillij  Welcome to the Canvas Community!

Once a course has submissions in it, it can't be unpublished, and this is a good thing to avoid losing student information protected by record retention laws.

Why do you want it unpublished?

Kelley

[jphillips27]

Because some of my students have emailed & complained that it still shows up on their end when our semester is over.

What do you mean by a course has submissions in it?

And why are some old courses still published but other old courses aren’t published then?

Sorry to ask a million questions, but since we are transitioning online in light of the times I figured I should familiarize myself with the process as much as I can…

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

 @jphillips27 ‌, while we aren't able to speak to your comment about which courses are published while others are not (and that would be a good question for you to ask the Canvas admin at the school), an instructor can conclude a course (assuming that permission has not been disabled* by the local Canvas admin), by following the instructions in How do I conclude a course at the end of a term as an instructor?  Students can remove the course from their dashboards on their own ( How do I view my favorite courses in the Card View Dashboard as a student?).

*If you're not able to perform the actions described in the conclude documentation, ask the local admin to do it on your behalf.

[jphillips27]

Perfect! Thank you very much for the help!

[kmeeusen]

 @jphillips27 

The old courses in your course list that appear grayed out are not unpublished, they are concluded as Stefanie describes.