We created a course using a previous course’s template because they are for the same company. The new course was created from scratch but we just wanted to use an existing theme/styling for it.
Now that we exported the new course, we were surprised that the zip file was really big. When we opened it, we discovered that the assets from the old course were included in the export even though we didn’t use any of them in the course. We checked all the components and articles, as well as the settings in Appearance, Extensions and Settings, to make sure all instances of old assets are removed.
Why is this happening and how can we remove them? It causing the export to be unnecessarily large.
We’ve added our support response here so other’s can reference it if needed;
If you create a duplicate of a course (A) as your base, any assets linked to the original course will also be linked to the new course (B).
Simply turning off an extension for example (in course B) does not remove any assets used in it.
Unless the assets are removed properly, rather than turning off extensions or deleting articles, assets may still be linked in the database.
If you know what the assets are in the published zip (course B), it should be safe to just delete them. This won’t affect course A.
Alternatively consider creating a new blank course and pasting pages in to it from course A.
This will only copy across assets used in any pasted elements.
If all you want to re-use is the theme, you could just make a brand new empty course and select the theme under the Appearance tab. You don’t need to duplicate a course.