Bulk Archive Classes

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The Classroom Explorer lets you perform bulk actions on classes. This lets you perform one action on many classes at once. One such bulk action is archiving classes. Classroom classes not reused from year to year are good candidates for archiving. Once archived, a class no longer appears on the student Home screen in Classroom.

A maintenance action for teachers is to archive their old classes. When teachers do not archive old Classes, it can create clutter and confusion for students. In that case, archiving in bulk can be a helpful administrative action. It is important to note that archiving classes on behalf of a teacher is non-destructive and fully reversible by the teacher.

Pro Tip: Be sure to communicate to teachers that they will need to unarchive classes they want to link to in an upcoming academic year/term.

To be bulk archived, classes must be in an ACTIVE state. To bulk archive classes you'll need to:

Identify unused classes in the Classroom Explorer
Select Classes to archive
Select the archive action
Confirm the archive

What Happens to an Archived Class?

Archiving a class removes it from teachers’ and students’ Classroom homepage. The class moves to a separate area to preserve class materials, student work, and posts.
Teachers and students can still view an archived class from the Archived Classes section. To use the class again, the teacher can restore it.
Teachers and students can access class materials for an archived class within the Google Drive folder.
Students can’t unenroll from an archived class.
Google Calendar retains the class calendar for teachers and students. Users can remove the calendar from view or permanently delete it.
An archived class stays in Google Classroom unless the primary teacher deletes it.

Timing of Archiving Classes

Because of what happens to classes, the timing of your archival is important. You don’t want to archive classes that are still in session. The best time to archive classes is after teachers have finished submitting grades for the semester.