# Deletion of Categories fails
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/deletion-of-categories-fails/409236
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** permanently-delete
**Created:** [4 augustus 2026 om 06:44 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/deletion-of-categories-fails/409236 "2026-08-04T06:44:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Thomas\_Rother](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Thomas_Rother)
#### Post date: [4 augustus 2026 om 06:44 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/deletion-of-categories-fails/409236/1 "2026-08-04T06:44:09Z")
We are consolidating categories and contents in our Discourse instance at [forum.netzwissen.de](http://forum.netzwissen.de) I moved all topics (including the description topic) into an internal “archive” category as admin, with bulk operations. But it is still impossible to delete the old categories, although they appear to be “empty” (message “Nothing to see here…check back soon!”). Any idea how to solve this?
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [4 augustus 2026 om 06:59 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/deletion-of-categories-fails/409236/2 "2026-08-04T06:59:22Z")
What’s happening when you try to delete the category? Any error message? Any JS error in your browser’s console?
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### Author:  [@Thomas\_Rother](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Thomas_Rother)
#### Post date: [4 augustus 2026 om 07:33 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/deletion-of-categories-fails/409236/3 "2026-08-04T07:33:25Z")
… no js errors at all. The “Danger zone” at…/c/[category-id/subcategory-id/edit/settings/
shows “Can’t delete this category because topic count is 13.” But there are no topics visible inside of this category. They have all been moved to a new sub-category below “Archiv” and are visible and accessible there. So we have a mismatch between the displayed topic count at the **old** location and the real situation where the topics are already re-located to a new location.