It is important to clean up the Content Collection on a regular basis, such as at the end of each semester. As courses, organizations, and users are deleted from Blackboard Learn, administrators also need to remove them from the Content Collection.

Remove courses

When a course is deleted from Blackboard Learn, administrators must remove it from the Content Collection manually. The course folder will no longer appear, but administrators and users who have permissions to the course folder (aside from course user permissions) may also search for and locate the course.

You'll receive an error if you attempt to create a new course with the same course ID as one that was deleted but not removed from the Content Collection. The course can't be created in the Content Collection because it already exists.

  1. On the Administrator Panel, under Content Management, select Manage Content.
  2. Select Advanced Search.
  3. Enter your search criteria. In the Search From field, enter /courses.
  4. Select Submit to view search results.
  5. Locate the course or courses you want to delete.
  6. To delete an individual course, open the course's menu and select Delete. To delete multiple courses, select the check box next to the course folder and select Delete at the top of the results list.

Remove users

When a user is deleted from Blackboard Learn, the user is not automatically removed from the Content Collection. The user's folder will no longer appear, but it can be searched and located.

If the user is not removed from the Content Collection and a user with the same username is added to the Blackboard Learn, as expected, a folder with this username appears in the Content Collection. However, the folder will be the restored folder for the original user, with all of the original contents and permissions intact. For this reason, it is recommended to remove users from the Content Collection as soon as they have been deleted.

  1. On the Administrator Panel, under Content Management, select Manage Content.
  2. Select Advanced Search.
  3. Enter your search criteria. In the Search From field, enter /users.
  4. Select Submit to view search results.
  5. Locate the user or users you want to delete.
  6. To delete an individual user, open the user's menu and select Delete. To delete multiple users, select the check box next to the user folder and select Delete at the top of the results list.

Remove courses or users in batch

Your institution's Content Collection may have a lot of unused or outdated content that's associated with users who no longer exist. Learn how to manage this content in bulk in the Manage Orphaned Content topic.

You may need to adjust performance settings when managing a large volume of orphaned content. Use the following settings in this case:

  • Query Statement Cache Enabled: Yes
  • Allow Depth Infinity Propfind: No
  • Maximum Responses to a Search: 10000
  • Transactional Change Size Limit: Unlimited