Unschedule a Scheduled Post in WordPress

One of the cool features in WordPress is the ability to scheduled your posts so they are “posted” later (hours, days, weeks, months, etc.)

But what happens when, after a post is scheduled, it needs to be unscheduled for whatever reason?

It is a tad tricky at first, because our instinct is to look for the “unschedule” button. There isn’t one. The “Publish” button has disappeared as well. How can you get back to either a normal draft status or to publish immediately?

First, edit the scheduled date to a date in the past. This will re-establish the Publish button. So you can choose to Publish immediately if you want.

Second, edit the Status from “Scheduled” to Draft. The kicker here is that the “Update” button does not update. If you reset the date to the future, the “Update Post” button will return. Clicking Update Post will save the post and not publish it nor schedule it.

A bit of a hassle, something that should be fixed in a future version I would hope.