# UNASSIGNED SHARDS and deleted indices coming back
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unassigned-shards-and-deleted-indices-coming-back/77605
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [March 7, 2017, 7:40am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unassigned-shards-and-deleted-indices-coming-back/77605 "2017-03-07T07:40:07Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@TomashO](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/TomashO)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2017, 7:40am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unassigned-shards-and-deleted-indices-coming-back/77605/1 "2017-03-07T07:40:07Z")
Hi,
I'm new to elasticsearch, so sorry if my question is trivial, but I don't know what should I do. I tried to delete a lot of old indices from ES (I have v5.0.1). I made it with queries like DELETE \*2014. It seemed to be ok, but after a period of time, those indices started to come back with red status of health. I also have a lot of shards UNASSIGNED for those indices and in log file I receive a message, that the dangling index could not be imported because of index with the same UUID in the index tombstone. I don't understand what exactly is this tombstone and how can I clean my ES now? How to clean this tombstone and remove all those unassigned shards?
Thanks in advance for every hints.
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### Author:  [@jkuang](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jkuang)
#### Post date: [March 9, 2017, 1:30am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unassigned-shards-and-deleted-indices-coming-back/77605/2 "2017-03-09T01:30:31Z")
Take a look at the article below:
> [@Auto import dangling indices to "no"](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/auto-import-dangling-indices-to-no/76577):
>
> I would like to make Auto import dangling indices to "no", can anyone please help me out here, how to do it and which file i need to change. Can you tell me the file location.
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 1:30am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unassigned-shards-and-deleted-indices-coming-back/77605/3 "2017-04-06T01:30:51Z")
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