Hi Craig! Thanks for your message.
Yes, we are using the grid catalogue. Unfortunately, we don't use dates as all our of our courses are available and we're not an academic institute. We more or less just work on them and post them when they're complete and ready for our staff. Moodle made hidden courses grey by default in Admin view, so I was hoping Totara would too. :( Ah well! Not the end of the world :)