Deleting an object

You can delete an object if you have permission to do so. Object permissions are part of the object's ACL (access control list). To see the permissions that you have with an object, right-click the object, select Properties, and select Security.

You cannot delete an object when other objects exist that depend on the object that you want to delete. These are called dependent objects. To locate any dependent objects, select the object you want to delete, then from the Tools menu select Search for Dependents. For a procedure to search for dependents, see Search for Dependents dialog box.

If an object cannot be deleted because of dependent objects, but a search for dependents does not return any results, it is possible that the parent object is saved in a personal answer for a prompt. Personal answers are not saved as dependent objects (they are managed objects), so they do not appear in a dependent search. You can search for managed objects only, and then delete the personal answers manually. See Search for Objects dialog box: Options for details on the managed objects search options and Search for Objects dialog box for a procedure to search for objects.

To delete an object

1. Right-click the object and select Delete.

2. Confirm the deletion by clicking OK. You can disable this confirmation step; see the Warn on Object Deletion setting in Developer  Preferences: Optional Actions category, General preferences.

See the following links for details on deleting specific objects:

• Deleting a grouping field in a document

• Deleting custom functions from a project

• Deleting definitions from data mart reports

• Deleting derived metrics

• Deleting layouts

• Deleting panels from panel stacks

• Deleting summary metrics from documents

• Deleting view filters