Removing vault history

Removing a vault’s history permanently purges historical data from a vault that was created before a specified date and time. Removing history can be useful to remove old revisions of documents that are no longer required.

Note    Removing vault history does not directly compact the database or reclaim unused disk space. To optimize database size and disk usage, see About the Vault Consistency Toolkit.

Note    To completely remove all vault history and prevent further historical data from being created in the future, consider disabling the vault’s Maintain history on Main area option instead.

Before you begin

Removing vault history is a permanent change that cannot be undone except by restoring a vault from backup. A safer option is to archive historical documents instead as described in Archiving documents.

To remove vault history:

1. Open the Administrator tool and select EDM Server in the left pane. The list of active vaults appears in the right pane.
2. Select the vault for which you want to remove history in the right pane.
3. On the Action menu, point to All Tasks and select Remove History. The Remove History dialog box appears.
4. Confirm the specified vault is the vault for which you want to remove history. If it is not, click Browse and select the correct vault.
5. Select a date and time in Remove all history before that you want to remove all history before.
6. Select either Remove documents and metadata or Remove documents only.

Tip    Select Remove documents only to retain the historical metadata for searches if the documents themselves will no longer be needed. You can remove the metadata later, if necessary.

7. Click Finish. A message is shown when the specified history has been removed.

Warning    After removing vault history, always run the Vault Consistency Wizard as described in About the Vault Consistency Toolkit to prevent database errors and to reclaim unused disk space.