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WPBeginner» Blog» Tutorials» How to Bulk Delete WordPress Posts (2 Easy Solutions)

How to Bulk Delete WordPress Posts (2 Easy Solutions)

Last updated on March 8th, 2019 by Editorial Staff
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How to Bulk Delete WordPress Posts (2 Easy Solutions)

Do you want to bulk delete WordPress posts? WordPress makes it super easy to manage posts from the admin area. However, if you want to delete a lot of posts then selecting and deleting them may take some time. In this article, we will show you two quick and easy solutions to bulk delete WordPress posts from your blog.

Bulk delete WordPress posts with two easy methods

Video Tutorial

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If you don’t want to watch the video tutorial, then you can continue reading the text version below:

Method 1. Bulk Delete WordPress Posts without Plugin

This method is easier and is recommended for all users. It uses the built-in WordPress functionality to quickly select a large number of posts and delete them.

First, you need to visit Posts » All Posts page. From here you can click on the bulk select box on top to select all posts displayed on the page.

Select all posts

If you don’t want to delete all of the selected posts, then you can now go ahead and uncheck those posts. Otherwise, you can click on the ‘Bulk Options’ drop-down menu and select ‘Move to Trash’ option.

Move to trash option

Next, you need to click on the ‘Apply’ button to delete selected posts.

WordPress will now move the selected posts to trash.

Using this default method, you can only select 20 posts at a time. What if you wanted to delete hundreds of posts?

Simply click on the ‘Screen Options‘ button at the top right corner of the screen. This will bring a pull-down menu where you need to change the ‘Number of items per page’ to any number you want.

Change the number of posts to be displayed

Next, click on the Apply button and WordPress will display the number of posts you selected earlier. You can now go ahead and bulk delete posts as described above.

Note: Deleted posts will be moved to WordPress trash and will remain there for 30 days. After that, they will be permanently deleted from your WordPress database.

Bulk Delete Posts by Specific Author or Category

Now let’s suppose you want to delete posts filed under a specific category / tag or written by a specific author? You can simply click on the author, category, or tag links to display posts associated with them.

Display posts by author, category, or tag

For example, clicking on the ‘News’ category will show you the list of posts filed under that category. You can then select the posts and move them to trash by using the Bulk Options menu.

Method 2: Bulk Delete WordPress Posts using a Plugin

The default bulk delete options are quite adequate for most users. However, there are some cases where you may need more options to quickly select specific posts and then bulk delete them.

For example, if you want to delete posts filed within last few days or posts older than a certain number of days?

Luckily, there is a plugin that lets you bulk delete posts using advanced filters.

First, you need to install and activate the Bulk Delete plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to Bulk WP » Bulk Delete Posts page in your WordPress admin area to delete posts. The plugin offers multiple ways to filter and select posts that you want to delete.

Bulk WP Settings

You can filter posts by duration, select posts published in last x days, delete them instantly without sending to trash, and even schedule to delete later.

As you scroll down further in the settings screen, you will find more options to select and delete posts by categories, custom taxonomies, custom post types, and more.

Sort and select posts by category

Bulk Delete can also be used to bulk delete comments, pages, users, and custom fields.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily bulk delete WordPress posts using these two methods. You may also want to see our list of the best WordPress plugins for business websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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4 Comments

Leave a Reply
  1. joseph tersoo says:
    Mar 21, 2019 at 6:21 pm

    i tried the first and the second method on my site but the issues i had is that i wasnt executing on time, it process like upto 5mins and just about 20 post will delete. also the same using the plugin, dont know thats the problem? i have over 2000 post to delete.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Mar 22, 2019 at 10:13 am

      You may want to try disabling any plugins you aren’t using in case there is a conflict that could be slowing down your site, another option would be to increase your execution time using: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-fix-fatal-error-maximum-execution-time-exceeded-in-wordpress/
      or deleting the posts in smaller batches such as 100

      Reply
  2. Ashish Punetha says:
    Nov 27, 2018 at 10:32 am

    Great Post,
    I want to just confirm, can we consider deletion via WordPress database.

    thanks.

    Reply
    • Editorial Staff says:
      Nov 28, 2018 at 8:26 am

      Hey Ashish,

      Using the above methods, the posts will be deleted from the WordPress database.

      You can also use SQL queries to delete posts directly in the database, but that method is not beginner friendly and are prone to more errors.

      Thanks for leaving a comment :)

      Reply

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