Version field is empty in knowledge articles

[SSantacroce]

Hello,

I have the necessity to give some users the permission to checkout and edit knowledge articles in my instance -

the problem is I've noticed that most of the articles in both my developer and production instances have their version field empty, so they can only be retired, not checked out.

I don't know why this has happened, I've read it can happened when you import them from somewhere else, but every article has only been imported once to the production instance, and still the ones in the developer instance are missing their version.

Does anyone know how I can fix this? Thanks!

[VaishnaviK3009]

Hi @SSantacroce !!

This usually happens in ServiceNow when articles are created or imported directly (e.g., via import set or script) instead of through the standard Knowledge lifecycle.

When that happens, the versioning engine isn’t triggered, so the version field stays empty. As a result, the articles can only be retired, not checked out.

To fix it, recreate them through the UI (copy content into a new article) or use a migration/repair option if available.

Mark this as Helpful if it clarifies the issue.
Accept the solution if this answers your question.

Regards,
Vaishnavi
Technical Consultant

[SSantacroce]

Hi @VaishnaviK3009 ,

thanks for the tip! All of the articles were created without imports or the use of scripts, so I really don't know how this happened. Is recreating them the only solution?

[VaishnaviK3009]

Hi @SSantacroce ,

If the articles were created manually and the version field is still empty, the safest solution is to recreate them so ServiceNow properly generates the version. There’s no supported way to retroactively add versions to manually created articles.

[VaishnaviK3009]

Hi @SSantacroce ,

If my solution helps you, please mark it as accepted so it can help future readers!

Regards,
Vaishnavi
Technical Consultant