I have two pages on my site that were not checked as active and yet the pages were viewable. I have checked and unchecked the link check box in edit pages a number of times to see if that would have an affect but no luck. Right now I am leaving them checked as active because I want to make sure they are active, but I cannot make them inactive if I wanted to. Am I doing something wrong? Could it be that if I have created a hyperlink to a page it is going to be active whether the box is checked or not?

Making pages inactive removes them from menus, but anyone who has saved (or can view) the URL pointing to those pages - and that include search engines - can still view them.

When you create a page, that creates a link to that page. Even if you never make a new page active and never tell anyone that it exists, you can go to that page by creating a bookmark with that link - or simply pasting that link in your browser's address bar.

So in reality, a page itself is never really "inactive"... It can only be hidden since the menu item pointing to that page can be turned on and off.

Perfect answer. Many thanks!