Delete a Data Extension

If you don’t need the information that’s stored in a data extension, you can delete it. When you delete a data extension, the information that it contains is also deleted and can’t be accessed anymore.

Marketing Cloud Engagement temporarily retains information from a deleted data extension to ensure that current processes can access that information. During this period, you can’t create a data extension with the same name as the deleted data extension.

Don’t delete a data extension that’s assigned to a triggered send definition. If you do, the status of the triggered send definition changes to indicate an error.

You can’t delete a data extension if it has a data relationship to contact records or to another data extension. To delete a data extension that has a data relationship, first use Data Designer to remove the relationship, and then delete the data extension. See Data Designer in Salesforce Help.

Important

Sample SOAP Envelope

1<s:Envelope
2  xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"
3  xmlns:a="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing"
4  xmlns:u="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">
5  <s:Header>
6    <a:Action s:mustUnderstand="1">Delete</a:Action>
7    <a:MessageID>urn:uuid:d5c8c2ee-384e-4492-af18-b01e0d438b62</a:MessageID>
8    <a:ReplyTo>
9      <a:Address>
10        http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing/role/anonymous
11      </a:Address>
12    </a:ReplyTo>
13    <a:To s:mustUnderstand="1">
14      https://YOUR_SUBDOMAIN.soap.marketingcloudapis.com/Service.asmx
15    </a:To>
16    <o:Security
17      s:mustUnderstand="1"
18      xmlns:o="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd">
19      <o:UsernameToken u:Id="uuid-c10e3bda-13ef-4868-bacd-6e760cd45cf2-1">
20        <o:Username>USERNAME</o:Username>
21        <o:Password>PASSWORD</o:Password>
22      </o:UsernameToken>
23    </o:Security>
24  </s:Header>
25  <s:Body
26    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
27    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
28    <DeleteRequest xmlns="http://exacttarget.com/wsdl/partnerAPI">
29      <Options></Options>
30      <Objects xsi:type="DataExtension">
31        <PartnerKey xsi:nil="true"></PartnerKey>
32        <ObjectID xsi:nil="true"></ObjectID>
33        <CustomerKey>External key of Data Extension</CustomerKey>
34      </Objects>
35    </DeleteRequest>
36  </s:Body>
37</s:Envelope>