# Reason to keep message field?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reason-to-keep-message-field/203665>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [October 15, 2019, 2:10pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reason-to-keep-message-field/203665 "2019-10-15T14:10:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![probson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e47c2d/32.png) [@probson](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/probson)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 2:10pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reason-to-keep-message-field/203665/1 "2019-10-15T14:10:32Z")

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Collecting windows logs via winlogbeats, removing the message field via logstash before the output phase, so far my daily beats shards are 80% smaller.

With all of the fields parsed and indexed correctly are there any reasons to keep the message field?

Thanks  
Phil

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**Author:** ![endersonmaia](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/endersonmaia/32/17308_2.png) [@endersonmaia](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/endersonmaia)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 2:22pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reason-to-keep-message-field/203665/2 "2019-10-15T14:22:59Z")

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one reason I can think of is to enable auditing, in case something goes wrong with the parsing in the future

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**Author:** ![probson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e47c2d/32.png) [@probson](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/probson)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 4:51pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reason-to-keep-message-field/203665/3 "2019-10-15T16:51:39Z")

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Thanks, i will take that into account, the logs in question would be windows logs from winlogbeat using ECS. Other logs i currently remove the message if there are no grok failures.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 4:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/reason-to-keep-message-field/203665/4 "2019-11-12T16:58:18Z")

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