# Unable to delete index

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-index/128596>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [April 18, 2018, 7:23pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-index/128596 "2018-04-18T19:23:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

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**Author:** ![theuntergeek](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/theuntergeek/32/44961_2.png) [@theuntergeek](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/theuntergeek)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2018, 9:23pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unable-to-delete-index/128596/4 "2018-04-18T21:23:09Z")

</div>

I can't remember which version they fixed this in, but I recall there being a change that allowed you to _unset_ the read-only flag. Older versions (and again, I'm not sure where the cutoff is) did not allow you to unset read-only once set, resulting in an error message like the one you're showing.

Have you tried an outright:

```auto
PUT /indexname/_settings
{
  "index.blocks.read_only": false
}

```

...to set the index back to full read/write capacity?

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