Delete a Data Extension

If you don’t need the information that’s stored in a data extension, you can delete it. When you delete a data extension, the information that it contains is also deleted and can't be accessed anymore.

Marketing Cloud Engagement temporarily retains information from a deleted data extension to ensure that current processes can access that information. During this period, you can’t create a data extension with the same name as the deleted data extension.

Don’t delete a data extension that’s assigned to a triggered send definition. If you do, the status of the triggered send definition changes to indicate an error.

important: You can’t delete a data extension if it has a data relationship to contact records or to another data extension. To delete a data extension that has a data relationship, first use Data Designer to remove the relationship, and then delete the data extension. See Data Designer in Salesforce Help.

Sample SOAP Envelope

<s:Envelope
  xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"
  xmlns:a="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing"
  xmlns:u="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">
  <s:Header>
    <a:Action s:mustUnderstand="1">Delete</a:Action>
    <a:MessageID>urn:uuid:d5c8c2ee-384e-4492-af18-b01e0d438b62</a:MessageID>
    <a:ReplyTo>
      <a:Address>
        http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing/role/anonymous
      </a:Address>
    </a:ReplyTo>
    <a:To s:mustUnderstand="1">
      https://YOUR_SUBDOMAIN.soap.marketingcloudapis.com/Service.asmx
    </a:To>
    <o:Security
      s:mustUnderstand="1"
      xmlns:o="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd">
      <o:UsernameToken u:Id="uuid-c10e3bda-13ef-4868-bacd-6e760cd45cf2-1">
        <o:Username>USERNAME</o:Username>
        <o:Password>PASSWORD</o:Password>
      </o:UsernameToken>
    </o:Security>
  </s:Header>
  <s:Body
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
    <DeleteRequest xmlns="http://exacttarget.com/wsdl/partnerAPI">
      <Options></Options>
      <Objects xsi:type="DataExtension">
        <PartnerKey xsi:nil="true"></PartnerKey>
        <ObjectID xsi:nil="true"></ObjectID>
        <CustomerKey>External key of Data Extension</CustomerKey>
      </Objects>
    </DeleteRequest>
  </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>