Best practice for cleaning up old Smart Lists – safe to delete based on “Used By”? | Community
Skip to main content
Level 4
February 17, 2026
Question

Best practice for cleaning up old Smart Lists – safe to delete based on “Used By”?

  • February 17, 2026
  • 4 replies
  • 35 views

I’m running a cleanup initiative to reduce clutter from legacy smart lists that are no longer actively maintained.

I wanted to confirm best practices before deleting anything:

  • Is it generally safe to rely on the “Used By” tab to identify smart lists that are not referenced by any campaigns, programs, or assets?

  • For smart lists that show no current dependencies and haven’t been modified or used in a long time, is deletion recommended versus archiving?

  • Are there any known risks (hidden dependencies) that we should be aware of before removing them?

Thank you in advance.

NN

    4 replies

    Level 2
    February 17, 2026

    Hi ​@Nurture_Ninja !

     

    • Is it generally safe to rely on the “Used By” tab to identify smart lists that are not referenced by any campaigns, programs, or assets?

      • Yes, this is a good guide. If the smart list isn’t referenced by any other assets you should be good to delete it.

    • For smart lists that show no current dependencies and haven’t been modified or used in a long time, is deletion recommended versus archiving?

      • This is really just up to whether you want these smart list assets retained in your instance. If the smart list doesn’t have any dependencies, I’d say go ahead and delete it if you’re definitely not going to need it, since you don’t have any dependencies to remove. BUT for any smart lists with dependencies you don’t want to go through and remove the references for, you can always just archive them so they’re not searchable in the instance. Archiving is probably the quickest and easiest way to “De-clutter” your instance. Here is another thread with some additional discussion around this too.
    • Are there any known risks (hidden dependencies) that we should be aware of before removing them?

      • Nope, any standard user-created smart list is pretty straightforward. If no assets show in its “used by” tab, you should be safe to delete them without any errors or impact to the rest of the system.

    Let me know any questions!

    Level 4
    February 17, 2026

    Thank you, this is very helpful. Just to confirm for double safety - deleting a smart list does not delete or impact the underlying lead records themselves, correct?

    Level 2
    February 17, 2026

    No problem! Yes that is correct, deleting a smart list does not delete or impact the underlying qualifying records in any way. That smart list will be gone, but the people in it will be unaffected.

     

    The same actually goes for static lists too, if you delete those, the people will remain in your database, the list asset will just be deleted.

    SanfordWhiteman
    Level 10
    February 17, 2026

    Actually, there very much is a risk here. If Smart List members are retrieved via API – we do this a lot, since filters on the Bulk Export endpoint are very limited – that won't show in Used By. 

     

    So take care to ask your IT folks and integration partners before purging any SLs you don't completely understand.

    Michael_Florin-2
    Level 10
    February 17, 2026

    Also, if Smart Lists are used as Custom Columns in Person Performance Reports, this is not shown by the “Used By” tab.

    Darshil_Shah1
    Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
    Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
    February 18, 2026

    @Nurture_Ninja, I agree with Sandy and Michael here -- you'd want to do a comprehensive investigation before deleting a list (Smart List/Static List) to ensure you're not impacting your existing integrations/reports. We follow a practice of adding meaningful descriptions (or names) of service/integration using SLs, so we don't delete/update them unintentionally/thinking it's not being used/referenced anywhere.