# Delete oldest X documents from index
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-oldest-x-documents-from-index/18704
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [July 16, 2014, 4:36pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-oldest-x-documents-from-index/18704 "2014-07-16T16:36:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Ophir\_Michaeli](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Ophir_Michaeli)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2014, 4:36pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-oldest-x-documents-from-index/18704/1 "2014-07-16T16:36:59Z")
Hi all,
I want to delete the oldest X docs from my elasticsearch index.
How do I do that?
Thanks, Ophir
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### Author:  [@David\_Smith\_2](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/David_Smith_2)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2014, 5:26pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-oldest-x-documents-from-index/18704/2 "2014-07-16T17:26:47Z")
You could add datetime field to your document and order by that in
ascending order and get the first X document id's. And then delete the
documents by id.
While that's the solution to the question you asked, it might be better to
re-think your problem so that you don't have to delete the oldest X
documents. Have you considered whether your problem fits into the
time-series index model? If it does, then you can just delete the oldest
day (or whatever time period). Take a look at this
video: [http://www.elasticsearch.org/videos/big-data-search-and-analytics/](http://www.elasticsearch.org/videos/big-data-search-and-analytics/)
(about 21:15 minute mark).
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 1:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/delete-oldest-x-documents-from-index/18704/3 "2017-07-06T01:15:24Z")