# Updating records and indices
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/updating-records-and-indices/200450
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [September 20, 2019, 3:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/updating-records-and-indices/200450 "2019-09-20T15:16:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@edster](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/edster)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2019, 3:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/updating-records-and-indices/200450/1 "2019-09-20T15:16:39Z")
Is there a way to update records in indices if they don't exist. Currently I've seen that values changed within an index get updated, however, if a record doesn't exist in a file, for example, the record is not removed. How can I update elastic or the logstash config files to update records if they no longer exist. (Both for files and for database ingestions.)
How about for an entire index. What if I need to remove the entire index every time because we don't have a unique document id but we need all the records. In other words we don't want the records to accumulate because we don't have a document id. We would just like to have the ones either currently used in the files or queries given in the logstash files.
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2019, 3:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/updating-records-and-indices/200450/2 "2019-10-18T15:16:40Z")
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