This utility, found under the Utilities menu on the main screen, permanently removes projects and all records associated with them, including all orders, invoices and check requests. Although you can use the Project List screen's Delete command to delete a simple design project, the Purge utility is required to remove projects that have ordering activity associated with them, since this requires full control of the system's data tables.

There is generally no need to purge projects unless you have a very large database (hundreds of projects) in which a substantial portion have no further value as sources for existing specifications and the database is displaying a slowed response time.

The utility displays the list of projects that have been previously marked for purging. If a project should not be processed, you can temporarily remove it from the list by unchecking the "Purge?" column.

When a project is purged, its raw data is copied to a subfolder named "Archives" in the FF&EZ data set folder (as a final safety feature) and then all records are deleted. You can then use the File Cleanup utility to remove all deleted records and make your system run as efficiently as possible. If you wish to remove the archived data, simply delete the archive folder for the project from the "Archives" folder.

Although it is very hard to do, if you accidentally purge a project and have not deleted the archive folder containing its raw data, contact technical support for assistance at minimal cost.