Tags | Articles |

Articles are a stand-alone content type meant for sharing long-form knowledge that doesn't fit well in the Q&A format. Articles show up in search results, and share many other features with questions. You can upvote articles, comment on them, add them to a Collection, and more.

NOTE: Articles are available on Stack Overflow for Teams Enterprise and Business (not Basic or Free). Find your plan.

To view or manage articles, click Articles in the left-hand menu.

The articles page shows a list of articles on your site. You can filter and sort the results by the following:

In addition to the main articles page, users can find articles through regular keyword searches. Searching by tags also includes articles along with questions and answers. Finally, tag summary pages show articles along with questions and answers.

You can use the is:article operator in the Search box to restrict a search to articles only. For example: the search "python is:article" will return articles (not questions or answers) that contain the word "python".

You can search for articles by type, by including the type as if it were a tag. For example: the search "python is:article [how-to-guide]" will return articles that contain the word "python" and are of the how-to-guide article type. You can use square brackets to search for these four article types:

When you click on an article to view it, Stack Overflow for Teams displays helpful information and statistics about the article. This includes the date the author wrote it, when it was last edited, how many times users have viewed the article, and the approximate time it will take to read.

The article view also shows the tags associated with the article and the avatar of the author. If the article's author is a subject matter expert in any of the associated tags, you'll see "Article authored by a subject matter expert in [tag]" above the article title. When you see this line, you'll know the article was written by a user recognized for their knowledge of the topic.

Certain users can make changes to articles, and Stack Overflow for Teams tracks and records these changes over time. To see edits made to an article, click its timeline button.

The article Timeline page shows the date of each edit, who performed it, and a comment describing the edit. Click Show vote summaries to show user voting history along with the article edits; click Hide vote summaries to hide voting history.

To see the actual edits performed, expand any edit row by clicking its gray triangle button. The detailed edit view shows deleted text with red highlights, and added text with green highlights.

To create an article, click Articles in the left-hand menu. Click Create a new Article to go to the article creation page. When editing, articles have the same auto-save feature as Q&A posts.

Give your article an informative title, and pick from one of the four article types. Article types give your team members a general idea of the type of content within the article:

Pick at least one content tag to classify your article. You can add up to four tags.

Add the main content of the article. Try copy-pasting existing documents you have on other platforms right into the editor to save time and automatically convert them into the Markdown format. You can also upload images, use lists, add code snippets, and much more. If you link to questions on your team within the article, those questions will also be listed on the sidebar to the right of your article’s content.

By default, anyone will be able to edit your article. To change editing permissions, click Permission settings.

From the Permissions settings menu that appears, click an option to grant editing permissions to only yourself, yourself and selected users or groups, or all users. Click Update settings to save your selection.

When you’re done editing, click Publish article (Teams Business) or Post article (Teams Enterprise) to publish your article.

NOTE: Stack Overflow for Teams Business users can also save a new article as a draft (which is not immediately published). See the Article drafts section below.

In addition to linking to the beginning of an article with its base URL, you can also link directly to headings inside an article. Stack Overflow for Teams automatically generates links for article headings (HTML levels H1-H6). You can see these anchor links next to each article heading.

Click any heading to load its link into your browser's address bar. You can then copy and save the resulting URL (with heading link) to link directly to that heading in the article.

While viewing an article, you can add it to a Collection by clicking the three dots button in the upper-right corner. Select Add to a collection. You can also add one or more articles to a Collection from inside the Collection itself.

Once your article is published, other users can provide feedback to the author and editor(s) of the article. This allows users to highlight its usefulness, similar to upvoting on questions.

To mark an article as useful, click the upvote button. To provide feedback to the author of the article, click the pencil and note (feedback) button.

Clicking the feedback button will show the "Provide feedback" box.

Select the type of feedback you're providing from the following options:

Use the text box to add additional details about your feedback.

Click Submit feedback to save your feedback. Stack Overflow for Teams will then notify the author so they can address the feedback.

Feedback is only visible to the author and editor(s) of the article. If they click on the feedback notification, or edit the article, they’ll see the feedback in the right sidebar. Clicking any checkmark resolves that feedback item.

Article authors receive reputation points for upvotes on articles, just like for Q&A posts.

In addition to publishing a new article immediately, you can also save it as a draft. This allows you (and collaborators, if desired) to write and edit your article before you publish it for all users to read.

To save a new article as a draft, click Save as draft.

Draft articles show a "Draft" icon, both in the articles list and on the article edit page.

NOTE: Only the author and those with editing permissions can see draft articles in the articles list.

You can filter the articles list to show only your drafts by selecting Your drafts in the Permissions select menu. This view will also show draft articles that other authors have given you permission to edit.

You can continue to revise a draft article by clicking Edit article, making your edits, and clicking Update draft.

To change permissions while editing a draft article, click Permission settings. The Permission settings pop-up menu will appear.

You can choose to grant editing permission to the article's owner only, or the owner plus additional users and/or user groups. If you want to allow additional editors, choose the second option to reveal the Search by name box. You can then search for and select users and user groups by name.

When you add editors to a draft article, Stack Overflow for Teams will alert them with a message in their "For you" inbox. That message will include a link to the draft article.

There's no limit to how many times you can edit a draft article. Each time someone updates a draft article, Stack Overflow for Teams generates a "For you" alert for the author and all editors.

When you're ready to publish your draft article, click Publish article on the article edit page. Once you publish an article, you can't take it back to draft status or unpublish it. You can continue to edit it as a published article, or delete it with the trash can button. You can also delete a draft article, before publishing, with the trash can button.

You can delete an article you've written to make it permanently inaccessible from the site. To delete an article, view the article then click Edit. Click Delete, and confirm that you wish to delete the article.

NOTE: Stack Overflow for Teams Enterprise users can recover the contents of a deleted article if they know its ID. See the Recover content from a deleted article section below.

When you delete an article, Stack Overflow for Teams Enterprise permanently makes that article inaccessible—but it doesn't remove it from the database. You can still access the deleted article's revision history, which allows you to see its content. You can then copy and paste the article's content to a new article.

To see an article's revision history, you need the article's ID. If you didn't save the article ID before deletion, it may exist in your browser's history. If you can't find it in your browser history, see if someone in your company has recently accessed the article and can provide you the URL.

Once you have the article ID, you can access the revisions page of the article by putting the article ID into this URL: https://[your_site]/posts/[article_ID]/revisions. The article's revision page will appear. It lists all versions of the article, starting with the most-recent (highest-numbered) version.

If your article has no revisions, copy all the content from the top of the page (version 1). Paste the content into a new article, and format as needed.

If your article has multiple versions, click Side-by-side to show the latest version (and no inline changes) on the right side of the screen. Select and copy the content from the desired version, which is usually the latest version at the top of the page. Paste the content into a new article, and format as needed.

Need help? Submit an issue or question through our support portal.