Unpublish Button Missing in SharePoint Online with Content Approval Enabled

Question

I am facing an issue with the "Unpublish" button in SharePoint Online. Recently, one of my customers requested to unpublish a page, but I noticed that the "Unpublish" button is no longer visible. After some investigation, I found that this button disappears when Content Approval is enabled. However, if Content Approval is disabled, the button reappears.

I would like to understand if this behaviour is part of a recent update from Microsoft or if this is how it has always worked. Additionally, I am looking for a solution to unpublish a specific page (when Content Approval is enabled) so that it is not visible in search results anymore, without deleting the page or updating its permissions.

The issue that I am facing is within the Site Pages library in SharePoint Online, and following are the version settings that has been applied to the Site Pages library:

Any insights or suggestions on how to resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi @Hemant Kabra ,

When Content Approval is enabled in SharePoint Online, the "Unpublish" button disappears. This is expected behavior and not a recent update from Microsoft.And, even if you can unpublish the page, you can't make it invisible in search results:

For your reference:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/management-and-lifecycle-of-a-sharepoint-modern-page-3410a04c-3ca4-4a4c-b867-33ab5c8bdcf3#bkmk_unpublish

Good day!

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