When it comes to managing the ideas on your board, we generally strongly discourage deleting them, as this will permanently delete all data associated with the idea, including comments, likes, and evaluations. There are alternate ways for managing ideas that are currently irrelevant or unfit for further development, for example, moving the idea to archive status.
If you still wish to delete a certain idea, it is possible to do so. However, to minimize accidents and misuse, only the admins of the board the idea belongs to have this right.
There are step-by-step instructions at the end of this guide.
First, we’ll explain why it’s preferable to refrain from deleting ideas in the first place and show you how to manage them instead.
Managing abandoned ideas
Ideas that are initially deemed too minor, too expensive or simply unrealistic to implement, may reveal unexpected potential later. For this reason, it is better to save all ideas, for later consideration. Especially since there is a designated effortless way to do so that is entirely separate from your primary ideation process.
You can create a separate "storage" for these ideas by adding a new archive status. Archive statuses work well as safes for plateaued ideas. You can also create archive statuses for other than just “unusable” ideas (e.g. already implemented ideas.) This way users on the board can still give input if they have new revelations on these ideas later on. An added benefit is that when the idea pops up again later, it's simple to see why it was previously abandoned, drastically improving communication.
After creating a designated archive status, admins can move all the ideas thereby changing the status of each individual idea. This way, all your data will be saved and available later.
P.S. If you’re a user and wish for an idea to be deleted or moved to a different category or status, you can contact an admin about doing this.
An admin's guide to deleting ideas
Doing this will permanently delete the idea and all data associated with it. If you skipped right to this part, we still recommend first reading the previous text on how to manage ideas instead.
Step 1
We'll start by opening a board.
Step 2
Open the idea you wish to delete. In this example, we'll delete the idea "New packaging material innovation."
Step 3
Click the grey “pencil icon” at the bottom of the idea. This will take you to the edit options.
Step 4
After the “Edit idea” window appears, click “Delete idea” from the top-right corner.
P.S. If you created an archive status, you can move the idea to this status from here. Just
find your archive status from the dropdown menu under “Status” and save.
Step 5
Mark the checkbox next to the statement of this action’s finality and click the red “Delete” button. This action cannot be undone.
Now your idea has been successfully deleted from the board!