Hi, if you just unpublish the content (don't set the archive to reference) then the content is just unpublished and you can't view it on the web page. An editor can use the preview functionality to view the page like it was on the web site (before unpublish).

If you set the archive to, then the Episerver scheduled job 'Archive Function' will move the content to the new location and re-publish it there. Please note that the 'Archive Function' scheduled job is not active by default but you need to run it manually from admin view or set it active and set the schedule for the job in admin view (to get it run on schedule ;-) ).

Hi Antti,

I have not set the "archive to" still i am not able to preview the content.

Thanks and Regards, 

Titiksha Mahimker.

Hi, just to clarify when you say "i am not able to preview", you are talking about the edit view 'Toggle preview mode' button? If you click that one when in Edit view - you still get 404 Not Found? The page displays OK if you switch between 'All properties' and 'On-page Editing' views? So these are the ones that should work without any errors even when the content is no longer published.

If the content has expired and you click the view on web site, that should return 404 error or your custom content not found page.

Hi,

The toggle preview mode button works fine it does not give 404 error.

But when i click on "view on website" it gives 404 error.

Can i customize this so that it will return the content instead of 404 error?

Hi, propably you could do custom code to handle the 404 and if logged in user with edit access you could load the content.

But maybe question is why would you want to do it like that? The content is not published anymore so why would the editor need to be able to browse to the page on the site? If they want to see how the page looked like (without the on-page edit functionality) then the preview functionality does that.

Back in the stone age the problem was that expired content redirected any user to the Episerver login instead of returning 404, which in some cases was a bigger problem. Have a look at this thread https://world.episerver.com/forum/developer-forum/-Episerver-75-CMS/Thread-Container/2014/2/send-requests-to-expired-content-to-404-not-login-page/ as it is from stone age where custom code was used to return 404 instead of login screen. Using information from there you might be able to handle the 404 from Episerver and do magic if the user has access to edit mode. Last resort would be global.asax application error handling where you could also load the expired content in 404 cases and show it for editors.

But still don't do it :D