Unpublish button is not visible when a document is approved

Question

Hi community,

I'm building some libraries in our company's SharePoint environment. In each library, the versioning settings are set as follow:

The permission I have on each library is 'Full Control'. However I'm not able to unpublish a document because the button is for a reason not visible.

Basically, I can continue working through the Checkout option but I would also like to have the option to Unpublish when certain documents should not be visible to readers for a time. Checkout therefore is not an option here considering the last major version remains visible.

Are there any people here with the same problem, or are there any who know how this can be solved?

Answer 1

Where the "Unpublish" button is not visible for approved documents in a SharePoint library, even with 'Full Control' permissions. The user seeks advice on making documents temporarily invisible to readers without using the Checkout option, as the last major version remains visible. The post invites others with the same problem or solutions to contribute.

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Answer 2

In the modern experience, when you approve a document, the document automatically approved and published.

If you want to unpublish a document, you need to return to classic experience, select the document, then unpublish the document.

After you unpublish a document, the document will be draft.

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Answer 3

@Emily Du-MSFT I am experiencing a similar issue. In my Modern Communication Site, the site pages library has Content Approval enabled (see the screenshot below). However, the unpublish button is no longer visible. It used to be there, but now it has disappeared, and I am unsure how to unpublish the pages. Could you please assist me with this?