Delete a custom attribute safely
A two-step confirm that tells you how many contacts lose the value. Read the number before you agree with it.
Deleting an attribute removes the field and every value stored in it. The two-step confirm exists because that is not obvious in the moment, and it names how many contacts are about to lose data.
The part that catches people is what happens downstream. Filters, saved views, campaign audiences, workflows and PDF templates may all reference the attribute — and deleting the field does not fix any of them. A campaign audience built on a deleted attribute is the thing most likely to break quietly.
Before you start
- An export of the current data, if the field has ever been used.
- A check of what references it: filters, views, campaign audiences, workflows, documents.
Steps
Export first if the field holds anything
Admins can export to Excel at any time. Five minutes now against data you cannot recover later is not a difficult trade.
Find what references it before you start
Saved views, campaign audiences, workflow conditions and PDF templates. This is the step that prevents the quiet breakage.
Start the delete
It takes a two-step confirm, on purpose, because deleting an attribute removes the field and every value stored in it.
Nothing about the first click suggests how much data is involved, which is exactly why the second one exists and names the number.
Read the count
The confirm names how many contacts lose the value. If that number is much larger than you expected, stop and find out why — the field is more used than you thought.
Confirm, then check what used it
Open any filtered view or campaign that referenced the attribute and make sure it still behaves. A campaign with a broken audience may stop dialling.
Consider hiding instead of deleting
If you are unsure, making the attribute admin-only removes it from agents' screens without destroying anything. That is reversible; deleting is not.
Check it worked
Check every campaign that was running when you deleted the field. A campaign whose audience referenced it may now have an empty audience — which looks exactly like a campaign that has finished.
The parts people get wrong
- Standard attributes cannot be deleted at all, so this only ever applies to custom ones.
- A campaign audience built on a deleted attribute is the most likely thing to break, and the least likely to announce it.