---
sidebar_label: Restoring & Deleting
sidebar_position: 13
description: Bring an archived DocJacket deal back to your active list, what restoring returns and what it deliberately doesn't, and how permanent deletion works — including when DocJacket refuses to delete a deal.
---

<!-- Canonical: https://help.docjacket.com/docs/transactions/restoring-an-archived-transaction -->
<!-- Source: docs/transactions/restoring-an-archived-transaction.mdx -->

# Restoring or Deleting an Archived Transaction

An archived deal isn't stuck there. You can pull it back into your active list at any time, or — if you're certain — remove it for good.

## Viewing your archived deals

On the Transactions page, click **Archived** in the top right. The count badge tells you how many are waiting. The list works like the normal one: search, sort, and columns all behave the same. Click **Active Transactions** to go back.

## Restoring a deal

From the Archived view, either:

1. **Tick one or more rows** and click **Restore** in the bulk-action bar, or
2. **Use the row's ⋮ menu** and choose **Restore**

![Archived Transactions view with a row selected and the Restore action showing](/img/transactions/archived-transactions.png)

### What restoring brings back

- The deal returns to your **active Transactions list** and your active-deal counts
- **Documents** and **text-message threads** are un-archived
- **Client portal links** are reactivated — the link you sent works again
- **Tasks reappear** in your task list and on your calendar
- **Review queue** proposals that archiving expired are put back to pending

### What restoring does not bring back

This is the part worth knowing before you archive something you're unsure about.

:::caution Restore reverses the hiding, not the decisions
- **Task statuses stay where archiving left them.** Tasks that were open became **Skipped**, and they stay Skipped — they're visible again, but not open again.
- **Key dates stay Not Applicable.** Dates that were pending were marked N/A, and restoring does not make them pending again.
- **Deleted scheduled emails are gone.** Pending scheduled email is deleted at archive time and cannot be recovered — you'd reschedule it.

This is deliberate: restoring shouldn't silently reopen work someone decided was finished. After restoring a deal you intend to keep working, walk its **tasks** and **[key dates](./key-dates-and-financials.mdx)** and reactivate what should be live.
:::

If you're restoring a deal only to look something up — far and away the most common reason — none of this matters. It matters when you're putting a deal back into active service.

## Deleting a transaction permanently

Deletion is a separate, heavier action, and it lives away from the list on purpose:

1. Open the transaction and click **Edit**
2. In the footer, click **Delete Transaction**
3. Confirm with **Delete Permanently**

The confirmation spells out what you're agreeing to: the transaction is permanently deleted, its milestones, tasks, scheduled messages, and portal links are cancelled, and it stops appearing in **every** list — including the Archived view. It cannot be undone from the app.

:::danger Archive is almost always the right choice
There is no undelete. If there is any chance you'll want the record — for a commission dispute, an audit, a broker file review, or just to remember what happened — **archive it instead**. Archiving costs you nothing: archived deals don't count against your active deals and don't appear in your working list.
:::

## When DocJacket refuses to delete a deal

If your office has compliance archival enabled, **closing** a transaction writes an immutable, retention-protected copy of it. A deal under that protection **cannot be deleted** — the delete will not go through, by design, because the record is being held for a retention period your brokerage set.

That's the system working as intended rather than an error. See [Security & Privacy](../getting-started/security-and-privacy.md) for how retention and immutable storage work, and talk to whoever administers your office if a record genuinely needs to go.

## Related

- [Archiving a Transaction](./archiving-a-transaction.mdx) — what archiving winds down, and archive vs. cancel vs. delete
- [Cancelling or Closing a Transaction](./canceling-a-transaction.mdx) — ending a deal with a terminal status