How to Delete a Category

[rorycb (Rory Craig-Barnes)]

Source #faq-material https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-delete-a-category/81567

To Delete a category you will need to do the following:

1. Remove all topics from the category (either move to another category, or delete them), see the Handy Tip below
2. Click on edit while in the category, it is on the top right
3. In the edit modal, select Delete Category, which will be a red button at the bottom
   1. If button is grey, you missed a message or more - When you click it you will be given a link to follow for the oldest topic that needs to be deleted.

One Exception…
There is one exception that can’t be deleted in this fashion! If you are trying to delete the “Uncategorized” category, the system won’t allow you to do it as it is a special category. Keep in mind you may have renamed this category, if you receive a “You can’t delete uncategorized” error, follow these steps to remove it.

1. As you did above, you’ll need to move, or delete all topics under the category.
2. You then need to turn off the “allow uncategorized topics” setting in the admin. To do this go to Admin>Settings>Posting and turn off that setting.

The “Uncategorized” category will no longer appear in your category list, and your users will no longer be able to post topics without assigning a category!

note: your staff and admins will still be able to post without a category, so make sure they know to set a category, as the system won’t.

Handy tip
If you have multiple topics to delete or move, clicking the icon will let you select multiple topics at once.

Once you have selected all the topics you want to delete or move, look for the Wrench icon near the top right, click that and you can delete/move all the selected messages in one go.

You’ll need to perform the same action on all selected topics. If you are moving to several categories, and deleting topics, select only the messages for each action, and repeat until you are done.