Published editions are usually archived, and then deleted (and purged) in regular intervals.

When an edition is deleted, all its pages and all the elements, linked to these pages, are deleted too, with exception of content residing in folders, excluded from deleting with edition.

The deleted editions, pages and elements however remain in the system for specified amount of hours, after that they will be purged, i.e. removed from the system, on the next run of the purge process.

If you delete an edition by mistake, you can undelete it (if it was not purged in the meantime).

If an edition cannot be deleted, an error message with details about the problem is displayed. This means that either the edition, or its elements, are locked, or there was a linking problem with articles. See Unlock (recover) edition elements.

The procedure of deleting and unspiking editions is explained in Delete or undelete editions.