# Purge last N documents from ElasticSerach
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/purge-last-n-documents-from-elasticserach/189229
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [July 7, 2019, 2:06am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/purge-last-n-documents-from-elasticserach/189229 "2019-07-07T02:06:17Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Dileep\_Mandapam](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Dileep_Mandapam)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2019, 2:06am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/purge-last-n-documents-from-elasticserach/189229/1 "2019-07-07T02:06:17Z")
Is there a way to purge last N documents from Elasticsearch?.
Use-case is, Purging documents based on the count.
For example, assume that the document count threshold was set to 1million and current document count is 1.1 million. I need to purge the last 0.1 million documents.
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### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2019, 2:37am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/purge-last-n-documents-from-elasticserach/189229/2 "2019-07-07T02:37:49Z")
Welcome.
Not really. Elasticsearch does not really know what are the first or the last documents unless you have a field in the documentation which can tell that (a counter, a date...).
Did you mean to purge the last N documents or the first N documents? What exactly is the use case for this?
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### Author:  [@Dileep\_Mandapam](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Dileep_Mandapam)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2019, 1:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/purge-last-n-documents-from-elasticserach/189229/3 "2019-07-07T13:00:57Z")
We have a timestamp field in the report.
Use-case: Purge criteria is based on number of documents.
Assume that doucment count threshold is 1 million. If total count of documents is 1.2 million then need to delete last 0.2 million documents.
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### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2019, 1:51pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/purge-last-n-documents-from-elasticserach/189229/4 "2019-07-07T13:51:37Z")
I don't see a way to do that.
And I don't understand the need you described. Why do you need such a threshold?
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2019, 1:51pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/purge-last-n-documents-from-elasticserach/189229/5 "2019-08-04T13:51:45Z")
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