Should I clear a Classification before deleting it?

[tcrewes1]

Hi Community, I hope you are well.

I have a number of legacy classifications I want to delete. I know I can delete the classifications via the report suites section of the Admin console. My question is: Is it better to clear the classification values (i.e. using ~empty~) before deleting the classification itself?

I'm not sure if deleting the classification automatically clears all of the values or if it's more like disabling a variable, where the data will still be there is if I re-add a classification to the variable in the future.

Any information would be really helpful.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I've never deleted classifications before, so I am not sure which is the best way to proceed... (I am very interested in what you discover though)

I wonder, do you have a Dev or QA suite with classifications? Maybe you could try deleting the classification there, then recreating it and seeing if the data still exists? I suspect since Classification data can be re-processed to change the values retroactively, it's not like dimension data which is actually saved as is into the data source. So I would expect the data to be gone as soon as the classification is removed... but that is a guess.