Sometimes you make a mistake, it happens to the best of us! When that mistake affects multiple records you might want an easy way to delete all those records and start fresh. Think about how one misaligned column or row on an import sheet could result in incorrect information associated with livestock, equipment, transactions, or contacts during the import. You might have imported hundreds of animals, and that single row being off on the sheet now assigned incorrect tag numbers, birth weights, and genealogy information to your animals. If you want to wipe the slate clean in bulk, you can select multiple records at once, and then delete them with one action.
It is critical to understand that once a record is deleted, it cannot be brought back. The deletion is permanent. We've added steps to confirm the bulk delete before it processes, and limited this feature to only Admin and Manager roles to reduce accidental deletions, but be careful when using this feature! If you have any hesitation about deleting the records, or think there is a chance you might need this information in the future, we encourage you to download the records first so you have a reference for them.
Be aware that we have designed this feature to be used to remedy mistakes, and not for a "system cleanup". We discourage you from removing old data in the process, as we think it's better to retain it for historical references. Want your Livestock list to look cleaner? Think about setting filters on the page for status instead.
OK, with the warnings out of the way, if you're absolutely sure you want to delete multiple records at once, follow the steps below. This process for deleting records is available for Livestock, Contacts, Transactions, and Equipment records. We will use Livestock as the example in our steps, but the process will be the same for each of the different areas.
In our example below, we've mistakenly imported a bison herd with the wrong tag numbers. We copied the column incorrectly on our spreadsheet, and now the animals are tagged with incorrect identification information; see how Bison 01 is tagged as CCB002 in the screenshot? Doh!
The first thing we're going to do is select the animals that need to be deleted from our Livestock list. You can do this by going through them individually, but it may be easier to set a filter first to limit the results. We had added a keyword in the import with the ranch we got them from, so we added that filter and now have our list of 49 bison that need to be deleted. You might filter by status, breed, type, or other similarities that these animals share. Use the checkboxes next to the animals to select them individually, or the one at the top row to select them all.
After selecting them, choose Bulk Actions, and then Delete Selected Records. A warning message is presented, and a confirmation is required to continue. Ensure the number of records shown at the top matches your expectations, and then type the word "DELETE" in the box. You can then click Delete to permanently delete these records.
And just like that, they're gone. Now you can go back to your import sheet, fix the error, and reimport them correctly.