How To Archive Or Unarchive Instagram Posts (2023)

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Social media is the best source to engage nowadays whether the engagement is for professional or personal purposes. Instagram is such a platform. It was introduced in 2010 and from then, it is among the most used platforms.

It may be due to its easy access to people from different parts of the world and super beneficial features. It is used for online business, tutorials, marketing, shopping, etc. The list goes on.

One of its important features is the archiving feature. This feature has several uses but to apply it, it is important to understand what it is and how this feature is used.

Further, you might wish to unarchive your Instagram posts in the future. So, here’s everything about how to unarchive a post on Instagram and more.

But first, let’s understand what the Instagram archive feature is.

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What is the Instagram archive feature?

Rolled out in 2017, the Instagram archive feature is used for hiding or removing the post (photos & videos) from the main feed that is visible to the followers.

Most of the time what happens is a picture or video seems to be inappropriate or not good enough to be displayed on the main feed, this feature is for such a situation.

What Are The Benefits Of Archiving Instagram Posts?

Here are the top benefits of the Instagram archive feature for its users.

Maintain an up-to-date profile

It is important to maintain a fresh profile especially if you have a business account or are an influencer. Because sometimes an old post might seem like a misfit or not good for the business or the profile.

The main motive behind this feature is to remove posts from the main feed but still not delete them forever, you can still find that post in the profile.

Saving the original likes and comments

As mentioned above, archiving a post means removing it from the main feed of the profile, but still not losing it permanently. And due to that, even after achieving posts, the user can still keep a record of all the likes and comments he has achieved in his post.

This is why archiving is way better than actually deleting it permanently. Because deleting it means losing all the likes and comments permanently, that might be a great loss, especially for a professional.

Presence of Analytics

Instagram is used for business and promotional purposes. For that, keeping a record of the analytics is the most important part.

Before the archiving feature was introduced, users had to keep all the posts so that they wouldn’t lose the analytics, but with the introduction of this feature, they can choose to archive the post (removing it from the main feed) and still keep the analytics of the particular post.

This helps the user to maintain a fresh and appealing profile while keeping all the analytics.

Control over each post and story

The Instagram archive feature provides control over every post and story on your profile. You can anytime make it visible on the feed by archiving it and again archive it as per the requirement.

Better Organization

Archiving posts does not mess up the organization of the profile, on the contrary, it improves the organization by keeping the posts in order, after unarchiving it also, they appear in the feed in chronological order (when it was posted).

So, these are the key benefits of using the archive feature on Instagram.

How To Archive a Post On Instagram?

Now that you know what an Instagram archive is, let’s understand how to archive a post on Instagram. Following are the steps that need to be followed to archive a post.

Log in to your account using your username and password.
Go to your feed by clicking in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
After this, select the post you want to archive.
After that, click on the three vertical dots present at the top-right corner of the selected post.

A menu will open up. Select the Archive option.

Once you select the Archive option, the post will be archived automatically.

See, archiving a post on Instagram is as simple as that.

Note: The above steps are for both Android and iOS devices. Additionally, follow the same steps if you’re using the web version of Instagram.

How to Access the Instagram Archive?

Do you want to access your archived Instagram posts? Well, accessing your Instagram Archive is much easier than archiving it. Follow the given steps to do so.

Log in to the account using the username and password.
Go to your feed by clicking in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
Click on the three horizontal lines on the top-right corner of the screen.

A menu will open up. Select the Archive option.

Once you click on the archive option, you’ll see the archived posts, stories, and lives.

How to Unarchive a Post on Instagram?

Let’s now get to how to unarchive a post on Instagram. Following are the steps that need to be followed to unarchive a post on Instagram.

Launch the Instagram app.
Go to your feed by clicking in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
After that, click on the three horizontal lines on the top-right corner of the screen.

After doing that, you’ll see an option for the archive. Click on it. You’ll get your archived posts there.

Click on the post you wish to unarchive.
After that, click on the three vertical dots present at the top-right corner of the selected post.

A menu will open up. Select the first option, i.e., Show on Profile.

The selected post will now appear on your feed.

That’s how to unarchive a post on Instagram.

Note: You can follow the above steps to archive or unarchive a story on Instagram.

Top 5 Ways to Engage your Audience using Instagram Archive

It’s no secret that every feature/option of Instagram contributes to increasing the engagement with the audience, the archive feature also contributes to this, and the following points will help you understand how it works.

Add stories to the highlight

The archive feature helps filter out the best stories from the archived folder. You can add back the old stories to the highlight section of the account making it a more systematic and organized profile. This is among the best advantages of this feature.

As stories tend to disappear after 24 hours, therefore, before this feature, there was no way to recover old stories or memories but with this feature, a user can easily find the particular story or memory and add it to the desired highlight. This helps in increasing engagement.

Repost your old posts

Sometimes, a post fails to get more engagement at a particular time (due to bad timing, etc.) Therefore archiving it might be the best option. But after some time, you can repost it making it appear in the main feed again which might lead to achieving the engagement it failed earlier.

Reuse your old pictures

Due to bad timings, particular posts might fail to achieve engagement due to their composition (hashtags, captions, tags, editing, music, etc.) Therefore, you archive it.

But later on, if you figure out a better way to make that picture more engaging by making changes in music, edit, caption, tags, etc., you can unarchive it to make the engagement with the audience better.

Change the focus of your Instagram profile

Sometimes, the focus of the profile needs to be changed for a temporary period. For such a situation the archive feature leads to increasing the engagement where you can simply keep the posts you want to be focused on while making the rest archived.

To remove any contest or promotional post

Most of the time contest-winning posts or promotional posts are of no use after some time, and followers might not be great fans of such posts. Therefore, to keep the profile clean and more interesting to increase engagement with the audience, the archive feature is used.

Conclusion

The archive feature was introduced in 2017. Lastly, there is a new section added to the archive feature. The live archive remains for 30 days only, except this, if you choose to repost a story it will only remain for 24 hours like normal stories, these two are the only limitations of this feature.

After all the above-discussed steps and information, it shouldn’t be any difficult to use this feature per convenience. Further, you’d not face difficulty in unarchiving your posts.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Can my followers see my archived posts?

Ans: Archiving is a private feature. Thus, it can only be done by the user (with the username and password). Only the user can have access to the archive folder, hence, the followers cannot see the archived posts unless they are unachieved and visible as a post. Followers can only see the posts on the main feed.

How do I archive live broadcasts on Instagram?

Ans: Live can be automatically archived on Instagram by following three simple steps. Firstly, go to the main feed and select the three horizontal lines, and select the ‘setting’ from the several options appearing on the screen. Secondly, select the privacy option from the settings. As the last step, select the Live option.
Now, there will be an option of ‘save Live to archive’ option. Turn that on. Therefore, all you Live will be saved to the archive on Instagram automatically (for 30 days.)

Can I archive multiple posts at once?

Ans: No, archiving multiple posts at once is not possible. There is no limit to how many posts you can archive, you can archive as many posts you want but for that, you have to select the posts one by one.