How long do Apple Support Community posts remain visible?

That's a slightly harder question to answer than it might first appear.

Unless your post is removed for a violation of the Terms of Use, it never goes away. However, finding posts more than about a month old can be a challenge. That's about how long they remain visible if you click on your avatar in the upper right of the page and click on "My Subscriptions."

There are two ways I know of to search for older posts. The first is to use the forum search feature. It's just to the left of your avatar. The second is to put this string into your favorite search engine (without quotes): "site:apple.com isj1".

isj1 wrote:

Thank you for responding back. I had clicked on My Subscriptions but did not see older posts, other than two that I had posted and one was yours. I do also click on the specific topic or my ID to pull up older subjects I posted. I am technically challenged but try to absorb what I can :(

As I explained, you won't see posts that have 1) been removed or 2) are more than about a month old when you look at your subscriptions. You'll need to either use the forum search function or do a site-limited search using your favorite search engine.

Also after a period of inactivity, the posts will be locked so there would be no new information added for you to review. They are still visible, but nothing else can be added to them. I don't know if that is what removes them from your subscriptions or not.

isj1 wrote:

Does the "Ask the Community" questions/discussions posted by a person get removed after a certain amount of time? I am not a very frequent user of the community but like to look back and see any new responses to my questions or look for other people's responses that may help me with a concern

It's also important where you post your questions. If you start your own question, you will likely get a response very quickly. If you follow up in a timely fashion, then you'll keep the question alive indefinitely.

But many people search for a similar question and then try to post their own reply. That's a very bad idea. That will usually result in your reply being immediately hidden. When a question starts to have a lot of replies, it will eventually be broken up into multiple pages. When that happens, the question is effectively dead. People can still post replies, but, by default, new replies will be added to some random page that isn't the first page, making them all but invisible.

Only a few people know to change their default sort order. So if you did that, I might see your reply. And I might reply with an exact, instant fix for your problem. But you don't know about sort order. So when you go back to the question where you added your reply, you'll never see the quick-and-easy solution I posted for you.

So for best results, always ask your own question.