# Delete efficiently
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-efficiently/18783
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [July 22, 2014, 8:40am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-efficiently/18783 "2014-07-22T08:40:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Ophir\_Michaeli](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Ophir_Michaeli)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2014, 8:40am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-efficiently/18783/1 "2014-07-22T08:40:14Z")
Hi all,
I want to delete 1 million documents at a time from a given list of
documents I get. The delete is by query (on one of the documents fields).
I want to understand what is the best practice to do that.
Loop through the million and delete one by one async, or will it cause an
overload on elsdaticsearch, and I should delete X at a time async and wait
till it's
done and then delete additional X. Or is there a batch delete that does
this work more efficiently?
Thanks
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### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2014, 8:53am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-efficiently/18783/2 "2014-07-22T08:53:56Z")
If at the end, it will remain a small subset, you could also think of reindexing only those docs in à new index and then remove the old index.
Answering to your question, you should run your query using scan and scroll and start remove docs using a bulk.
My 2 cents
--
David 😉
Twitter : @dadoonet / @elasticsearchfr / @scrutmydocs
> Le 22 juil. 2014 à 10:40, Ophir Michaeli [ophirmichaeli@gmail.com](mailto:ophirmichaeli@gmail.com) a écrit :
>
> Hi all,
>
> I want to delete 1 million documents at a time from a given list of documents I get. The delete is by query (on one of the documents fields).
> I want to understand what is the best practice to do that.
> Loop through the million and delete one by one async, or will it cause an overload on elsdaticsearch, and I should delete X at a time async and wait till it's
> done and then delete additional X. Or is there a batch delete that does this work more efficiently?
>
> Thanks
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group.
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> For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/d/optout](https://groups.google.com/d/optout).
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 1:14am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-efficiently/18783/3 "2017-07-06T01:14:18Z")