Classroom courses — created dates, bulk status and deleting from Google

Classroom reporting → Courses (sidebar, under Engagement) lists every Google Classroom course synced for the active school, with its owner, its state, the date it was created, and its teacher, student, assignment and submission counts. You need the View classroom reporting permission to open it; the Set course status and Delete from Google actions are for admins only and don't show for anyone else. The page needs a school selected — in MAT overview it asks you to switch to one. The list comes from the Classroom data Realsmart reads from Google each day (see Classroom reporting).

The bulk actions on this page talk to Google directly — they are not queued for the overnight sync. What you do here happens in Google while you watch.

Reading the list

• Created is the date Google created the course. Click the column heading to sort by it — ascending shows the school's oldest classrooms first, which is usually what you want when clearing out years of history. Hover the date to see the exact time.
• State is the course's state in Google: Active, Archived, Provisioned or Declined.
• Group names the group in ADAdmin that still holds this course — as its current classroom, as last year's classroom, or as a stored backup. A course with a group here cannot be deleted from Google; the delete action leaves it exactly as it is. A dash means nothing points at it and it can be deleted.
• Search course name, the state dropdown (All states, Active, Archived, Provisioned, Declined) and the Filter by user or group… box narrow the list. Everything below acts on what the filters have left. The other columns are Owner, Teachers, Students, Assignments and Submissions.
• Export (top right) downloads the filtered list as CSV — course name, state, created and updated dates, owner, linked group and the counts — so you can work out what is safe to delete before touching anything.

Selecting courses

Step 1 — Tick what you want

Tick a row's checkbox, or the checkbox in the table header to take the whole page (50 courses).

Step 2 — Or take every course matching your filters

With the page ticked, a banner appears above the table offering Select all N matching. That covers every course the current filters return, across all pages — not just the page you can see. The action bar always states how many courses you have selected, and every confirmation repeats that number.

Clear selection in the same banner puts it back.

Setting a course's status in Google

Step 3 — Choose Set course status

Set course status offers Google's four course states:

Archiving is the safe way to retire a class: nothing is lost, and setting it back to Active brings it straight back.

Deleting courses from Google

Step 4 — Delete from Google

Delete from Google removes the course from Google Classroom permanently. You will be asked to type DELETE to confirm.

This cannot be undone. The course, its posts, its assignments and every student submission go with it, and Google offers no way to restore them. If you only want a class out of teachers' and students' way, archive it instead.

Two things worth knowing before you press it:

• Google will not delete a course that is still active, so a course that needs it is archived first and then deleted for you, in one step.
• Courses still linked to a group are refused. The Group column shows which those are before you start; they are left exactly as they are, and the summary at the end names them and the group holding each one. A group counts as holding a course whether it is the group's current classroom, last year's classroom (the one Reactivate last year's classrooms restores) or a stored backup — deleting any of those would either break that restore or simply come back as a brand-new empty course on the next sync. To delete one of these, unlink or delete the group first. See Find and link a group's Google Classroom.

While the run is going

Step 5 — Watch the progress bar

Each course is a live call to Google, so a large selection is handed out in small batches and a progress bar shows how far through it is. Keep the page open until it finishes — anything already done is saved, and re-running the same selection picks up the rest.

When it ends you get a summary: how many succeeded, the names of any Google refused, and — for a delete — how many were left alone because a group still holds them. A course can fail because its owner's account is suspended, or because the school's Google admin account does not have rights over it. "Left alone" is not a failure: nothing went wrong, the course was deliberately not touched.

Only one run at a time per page — start a second and you will be told to wait (A course action is already running — wait for it to finish first.).

Messages you may see

• "Select at least one course." — nothing was ticked.
• "Nothing to do — none of the selected courses are in this school any more." — the selection was stale; reload and select again.
• "Course status set to archived for N course(s)." / "Deleted N course(s)." — the run finished. A summary of the form "… N of M course(s). Failed: …" names courses Google refused.
• "N left alone — still linked to a group: …" — delete skipped these on purpose; see the Group column.
• "Nothing deleted." — every selected course was still linked to a group.
• "The course action stopped part way through. Anything already done is saved — select those courses and run it again." — the page lost its connection mid-run; run it again on the same selection.
• "this school's Google admin account could not be authorised" (as the reason in a failed run) — check the Google connection in Google Workspace settings.

Related

• Google Classroom settings — turn Classroom and Classroom reporting on
• Find and link a group's Google Classroom
• End of term Classroom options