Skip to main content

Deleting Documents

KB administrators can remove individual documents from a knowledge base. This page explains how, what it affects, and when it's blocked.

How to delete​

  1. Open the Apps Dashboard.

  2. Click the ✏️ edit pencil on the KB.

  3. Go to Step 3: Knowledge Base.

  4. In the Current Documents table, click the 🗑️ delete icon in the row of the document you want to remove.

  5. A confirmation dialog appears:

    Are you sure you want to permanently delete '{document name}'? This action cannot be undone and will also delete all associated chats.

  6. Click Confirm to delete, or Cancel to keep the file.

What gets deleted​

When you delete a single document, Genie removes:

  • The file from blob storage
  • All vector-search index entries for that file (so users can no longer retrieve passages from it)
  • The file processing job record

What is not deleted on single-document delete:

  • Other documents in the same KB
  • The KB itself
  • Chat sessions that previously cited or referenced the deleted document — these stay in the user's chat history (only the cited document is gone, so re-opening an old chat will still show the answer text but its citation links will return 404)
  • Audit log entries (kept for compliance — see Security & Privacy)
Confirmation dialog wording is misleading

The in-app confirmation dialog says "This action cannot be undone and will also delete all associated chats." In the current build the cascade-to-chats behavior is not implemented — only the document is removed; old chats remain in users' histories with stale citations. The dialog text will be corrected in a future release.

If you genuinely need to delete every chat that mentioned a document, you must delete the whole KB (see Deleting the entire knowledge base below) — that is the only operation that cascades chat sessions today.

When the delete button is disabled​

If the document is in the processing state (still being indexed), the delete button is greyed out. There is no tooltip explaining why — the button is simply not clickable until the status column shows completed or failed. Wait for processing to finish and the button reactivates.

Bulk delete​

There is no bulk-delete UI. To remove multiple documents:

  • Delete them one at a time
  • For very large clean-ups, contact Support to run a server-side script

Deleting the entire knowledge base​

If you need to remove an entire KB and all its content:

  1. Go to the Apps Dashboard.
  2. Click the 🗑️ delete icon in the Action column of the KB row.
  3. Confirm the dialog.

This deletes the KB metadata, every document in it, every join request, and every chat session ever held against it. It cannot be undone.

This is permanent

There is no soft-delete, no archive, and no 30-day grace period. Deleting a KB is forever. If you're unsure, leave it in place or contact Support first.

What users see after deletion​

  • Removed document: users will no longer get citations to it in new chats. Their old chat sessions that cited the file still appear in their chat history (the answer text remains), but the citation links into that file may no longer resolve. As noted above, single-document delete does not cascade to existing chat sessions.
  • Removed KB: users will no longer see it in the KB dropdown when chatting; their /apps list will exclude it. Every chat session that was ever held against this KB is deleted along with the KB.