Purging lonely files out of the database

[Anonymous]

I would like to streamline our database by deleting out all of the independant files left after product development. Files that were created on a previous rev, checked in and are no longer needed but still exist floating around on the server never to be used again.

Is there a way for Vault to identify & collect items which have no dependants or relations?

Cheers

Nick

[BLHDrafting]

I have 2 answeres depending on what Vault flavour you have.

If you have anything above Vault Basic then Doug Redmonds blog topic here will do the trick. It's run on a folder and finds the orphans. I use it per job folder but I don't see whay it couldn't be run on the Vault root folder. Might take a while though if your database is big 🙂

If you have Vault Basic then it's a bit more involved. Let me know if you have Basic and I'll add another post.

[Anonymous]

Hi Brendan, Thanks for the speedy reply!

The cheapskates only have basic Vault, though sometime in the future I'm told we'll have collaboration. Please let me know of the other way.

Regards

Nick

[BLHDrafting · Accepted solution]

Nick, upgrading to anything other than Basic is $$$. But very worthwhile.

I actually have 2 ideas. 1 being the way I did it (long winded) and the other a bit more visual. Both are per folder only I think.

Suggestion 1 (this is what I originally did) :-

Make a Vault only property (so it doesn't have to populate the models/drawings), something like USED?. Then find the top loevel assy and look at the Uses tab. Select all items in the Uses and do a CTRL+E (edit properties). Add a value like Y in the Used? column for each of the items. Finisht he edit. Then do a folder search for items that the property USED? does not contain Y (or whatever value you used). Delete the results, but not the IDW's (and any other file/type that you know is to be kept). These don't get used anywhere so they don't gey the Y value in property USED?.

Suggestion 2 (came at 2:30 this morning!) :-

Clear out your local WS. Then do a GET from Vault and include Dependents and related Documentation. Then using the Vault Status icons you can see in Vault which files are local and which are not. Delete the ones that are not local.

Both methods are a bit time consuming. Suggestion 1 is a bit more automated. If you upgrade to Workgroup there is a nice add-in that does this also.

Last suggestion - FULLY TEST ON SMALL DATASET BEFORE ROLLING OUT SITE WIDE!

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Brendan

Success! The early morning lightbulb was the solution!

Regards

Nick