SOLVED

Remove items from News on SharePoint Communication Site

Iron Contributor

We have a requirement to expire news posts, but we would like keep them for later as archives.

Removing a post actually removes the page in Pages library:

Is there a way to un-promote a Page from the News 'feed', without deleting?

56 Replies

@Chris Webb ok tried all these steps...created a new view for site pages, set as default, added ALL columns to see if it would somehow trigger it to appear, tried chrome, IE, and firefox. Quick edit just doesn't exist for our tenant in modern view, I found an article here for the same issue some users just don't have access quick edit some do. That's where I got stuck. So I am back to square one, I will just delete pages to remove from news but I thank you for suggestions.

You can turn it off in library settings, that's why i said try a different site etc. Assuming you are admin / site collection admin of the site your messing with. Anyway, you can also try "Grouping" by the promoted state column, and trying to drag and drop method between the 0 group and 2 group.

@Chris Webb ok I think unraveled the mystery of the missing quick edit for anyone who needs this in the future. Yes Quick edit was turned on in the Library settings before, but for some reason modern view doesn't seem to pay any attention to it. I was doing all of this you suggested in modern view (creating new list views, adding columns, looking for a quick edit button in every menu). I went to the advanced library setting and saw I can change it to display the library in Classic view. So I changed it to the classic experience. Hey, I see a Quick Edit button now but greyed out with some "this option is not available" error nonsense displayed when hovering over the button. So I followed your suggestion of creating a new view with those columns, setting as default (in the classic experience, not modern). Navigated back to the library. Hey Quick edit button is enabled! So here's the weird part. I went back in to the library settings and switched back to modern experience. What do you know, the quick edit button has magically appeared there now too where it wasn't before. So it appears there is a disconnect between these two views, and is confusing as hell. Thanks for your help.

 

 

@Deleted But alas I am still not able to edit that promotevalue in Quick Edit. Only text columns allow changes, that value can't be changed the box is greyed out. Oh well!

I use just the regular "All pages" view with No grouping. It is still greyed out for me. It can't be an permissions-thing, can it?

@Helena_Starenby There is another thread with a very simple fix. Go to library settings and click Promoted State. You don’t have to change anything- just Save. This should “light up” the ability to use Quick Edit to change the Promoted State from 2 (news) to 0 (site page). 

I can’t find promoted state under library settings ... Can’t get it to work, too bad. I have a Communication site, if that changes anything.
You need to add it to the view first. Use the link to add a new modern column and then check show/hide columns. Select Promoted State and save the view. That should make it visible in the column area of Library Settings.
I did that already. :)

@Helena_Starenby I believe this is the post that @Susan Hanley referenced. You need to edit from Column settings (in the view) rather than from Library settings.

Yey, it worked! Thank you all for your patience. :)

@JHerschel 

 

Try below PnP Command:

 

Set-PnPListItem -List "SitePages" -Identity <add ID of the page here> -Values @{"PromotedState" = "0"}

Demoting Sharepoint News without having to delete the page:

 

  1. On the Sharepoint site click on "Site Content".
  2. Click on "Site Pages".
  3. Select the "All Pages" View.
  4. Click on Add Column and then on the show/hide columns option a call out menu of all the available columns will appear on the right of the page.
  5. Tick the "Promoted state" Colum and then tick the apply option.
  6. Click on the "Quick Edit" option and see if you can edit the value in the "Promoted State" Column the chances are that it will be greyed out in which case you need to follow the further steps.
  7. Exit Quick Edit, Click the drop down arrow on the promoted state column and go to column settings and edit. A call out menu will appear on the right hand side, don't change it just click save this will enable the option to edit the promoted state value as noted below.
  8. Select the page that you want to change the promoted state of, click on the circled i to bring up the information options and then select "Edit All"
  9. The value under promoted state should be editable now and 0 equals not promoted and 2 equals promoted. 

I would add a couple of caveats to this advice. Use the promote or create news page to promote pages in the first place don't change the value above to 2 as a way of promoting a page. This could be open to human error and you might end up promoting the wrong page. Secondly it might make sense to use the permissions level to change who can and cannot change the promoted state as you don't want everybody to be able to do this. I am unsure exactly how to do this. 

 

This does not cover the option to set a timescale on a news item which is shown above.

Hope this helps.

@Hydeparkandy The number of responses here about a basic and obvious requirement - the ability to truly unpublish news posts - indicates just how poorly designed and confused the modern/classic hybrid state of SP is. 

The "unpublish" option just unpublishes the latest version and reverts to the previous one  - so doesn't do what it implies.

Changing a post's promoted state field to 0 to make it a regular site page doesn't remove it from the news feed so also apparently doesn't do what it implies. My guess is there's a bug here or a coding error that causes this.

Note also the strange logic behind the promoted state field. A value of "2" technically means a published news post. But if you manually change that property to published (2), you're editing the page so need to republish it. Makes no sense.

The only real option is to train people to not publish until they are sure they want their content to be seen. (Good luck with that!) If they do by mistake, they'll have to delete the post and start over. Or manually reposition the offending post so it drops off the news web part view. 

Jeeeez!

I don't see "Promoted State" as an option when adding a column. Is this something that has changed in the last three years? Why should I have to unpublish page to get it off the stupid "My News" list? The pages now are a year old and they're still appearing. How does this happen? It's ridiculous.
To view the promoted state of a page, go to the site pages library. Select the link to add a new column at the far right of the view. Then scroll down to the Show/Hide columns selection. Click the checkbox in front of Promoted State and click Apply. You will now see Promoted State in the view of the Site Pages library. I recommend making the All Pages view the default view and adding Promoted State to that view. You need to add the field to each view separately. If you add it to the all pages view, you can group by Promoted State to show all News articles together. You could also create a view that only shows only News by filtering for Promoted State = 2.

As noted above, changing the promoted state or unpublishing a published news post won't remove it from a news feed. You'd expect unpublishing would be the reverse of publishing and reset the post to a draft version, but it doesn't. It creates a minor version but users can still see the prior published version. You have to either copy the post and delete the original, or use powershell to remove/reset the FirstPublishedDate field.