Updated Sep 2026
Post statuses explained
Every post moves through a small set of statuses from the moment it’s created to the moment it publishes (or doesn’t). This page is a reference for all six: what each one means, how a post ends up there, what you can do from it, and whether you’ll find it on the Content page or the History page.
Statuses at a glance
| Status | What it means | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| Pending | Written but not yet approved or rejected. Nothing publishes from this state. | Content page (default view) |
| Approved | Cleared by you to publish. Still editable. | Content page |
| Posted | Published to the platform. Content is locked forever. | History page |
| Rejected | Declined by you (or removed). | History page |
| Expired | Reached its scheduled time unapproved, so it missed publishing. | History page |
| Failed | An approved post’s publish attempt was refused. | History page |
The Content page’s Status filter can also show Approved, Rejected, Expired, or Failed posts if you want to look at them there instead of switching to History. The page opens to Pending by default.
Pending
A post lands in Pending the moment it’s created, whether AI wrote it or you wrote it yourself, and stays there until you decide what to do with it. Nothing publishes from Pending, no matter how long it sits.
How a post gets here: creation (AI-generated or written by hand). It’s also where a post returns after you reactivate an expired or rejected one, or after a connection is disconnected and its approved posts get parked back (see below).
What you can do: Approve it, Reject it, or edit its content first. If your brand has compliance review turned on, it may also need a passing or acknowledged analysis before Approve is available. See Review and approve your posts.
How long it can wait: as long as you like. A pending post doesn’t expire from age, and there’s no clock on your decision. The one exception is a pending post with a scheduled time: if that time arrives and the post still isn’t approved, it misses its publication and moves to Expired (see below).
Approved
Approved means you’ve cleared the post to go out. It doesn’t publish the instant you approve it. It publishes either at its scheduled time (if you set one) or when you select Post Now. Until then, it sits, ready to go.
How a post gets here: you select Approve (or Acknowledge & approve) on a pending post.
What you can do: an approved post is still editable. Editing it doesn’t undo the approval or send it back to Pending. If you edit it, the compliance gate re-checks the new content the next time you (or PostSignoff) need it analyzed, but the status itself stays Approved. You can also Reject it, Schedule it, or select Post Now to publish immediately.
Posted
Posted means the post published successfully. This is the one status where the content is locked. Permanently. You can’t edit the text, hashtags, or sign-off of a posted platform version. The published copy is preserved exactly as it went out.
How a post gets here: a successful publish, whether by its schedule or by Post Now.
What you can do: view it. The History page and its outcome drawer show the published text, a View live link, who approved it and when, its compliance record, and its edit history up to the point it published. You cannot edit or re-approve it. Trying to edit posted content returns “Posted content is locked — the published record can’t be edited.”
Rejected
Rejected means you declined the post. It isn’t going out. A rejected post isn’t deleted. It’s kept, and it can be brought back.
How a post gets here: you select Reject on a pending or approved post, individually or in bulk.
What “Delete” actually does: PostSignoff doesn’t have a separate, permanent “delete” for a post. Rejecting is the closest thing to it. A post that’s removed this way becomes Rejected, the same status you’d land on by selecting Reject yourself. Nothing is destroyed and it can still be reactivated.
What you can do: select Reactivate to send it back to Pending for another look. See Reactivate an expired or rejected post.
Expired
Expired means a post reached its scheduled time without being approved, so it missed its publication rather than going out late. The post shows Expired — missed its scheduled time. The reasoning behind it is covered in Why every post starts pending.
How a post gets here: a scheduled time arrived while the post was still pending. This is the only way a post expires — sitting in Pending doesn’t do it, no matter how long.
What you can do: select Reactivate to send it back to Pending, where it waits for your decision like any other draft. If any of its media had been archived while it sat expired, reactivating restores that media automatically. See Reactivate an expired or rejected post.
Failed
Failed means an approved post’s publish attempt was refused by the social platform. The reason is recorded on the post. You’ll see it as a failure badge on the Content page, in the History row, and in the History outcome drawer’s Failure section.
How a post gets here: publishing (scheduled or via Post Now) is attempted and the platform rejects it. Typical reasons: an expired connection, a missing image on Instagram, or no connected account for that platform. Not every temporary problem lands here immediately: a scheduled post that hits a brief, temporary issue (like a rate limit) stays Approved and PostSignoff retries it automatically for up to about 2 hours before marking it Failed. A manual Post Now attempt that hits the same kind of problem fails right away instead of auto-retrying.
What you can do: fix the underlying problem (see Fix a post that didn’t publish for common causes), then select Retry to publish again immediately. This uses the same publish action as Post Now.
Approved posts parked back to Pending
If you disconnect or remove a social account, any posts approved for that platform are automatically moved back to Pending instead of being left to fail at publish time. You’ll see a note on the post explaining why, and you’ll need to re-approve it once the account is reconnected. Draft (unapproved) posts for that platform aren’t touched. This applies whether you choose Disconnect or Remove on the account. Either one offers to move affected posts to Pending as the recommended option.
Who can edit what, when
- Pending and Approved: fully editable. Editing an approved post does not change its status.
- Rejected and Expired: not being actively worked on, but not locked either. Reactivate first to bring a post back into the normal edit/approve flow.
- Posted: locked. No content field (text, hashtags, sign-off) can be changed once a platform version has published.
Archived groups
Archiving a post (from its Archive button) is different from rejecting it. Archiving sets every platform version’s status to Archived, a separate status from the six above with no undo action in the app. An archived post drops out of the Content page’s default Pending view, but you can still find it by setting the Status filter to Archived.