When a customer says "delete my data", being able to do it is a legal obligation; when you want to clear out a test record, you press the same button. Deleting a contact removes every trace of that person from your panel and . This guide explains where the button is, exactly what goes with the deletion, and what to check first.
cannot be undone
⚠️ Deleting a contact is available only to the owner and administrator roles. In other roles the delete section is not drawn at all, and the server refuses the action even if it is called directly.
In this article you will find:
Deleting a single contact
Deleting several contacts
Exactly what goes with the deletion
What to check before deleting
Personal data deletion requests
Limits and known issues
Common mistakes
Deleting a single contact
Click the person's name on the Contacts screen.
Find the Delete contact section in the card's right column (at the very bottom on a phone).
Read the section's description: it says what will be deleted.
Press Delete contact and conversation.
Read the confirmation; it names the person.
Confirm.
When the deletion finishes, the panel takes you back to the Contacts list. The person is no longer there.
Deleting several contacts
You can turn on selection mode in the contact list and delete several people at once. The confirmation says how many will be deleted, and when it finishes you are told how many were removed and how many were skipped.
There is no separate route for bulk deletion: every record passes through the same permission gate as a single deletion, and each deletion is written to the audit trail on its own. While "select all matching" is active, the delete button is disabled.
When a contact is deleted, everything attached to them is removed in a chain:
The conversation and all messages — incoming and outgoing, attachments included.
Notes — every internal note your team left on that person.
The AI profile — summary, customer type, approach and the Conversation records list.
Automation sessions and step logs — every flow record that ran on that person.
Pending jobs — sends that scheduled triggers had planned for that person.
Sequence records — the sequences they were in and their pending steps.
Tags, fields and language — they go with the card.
Conversion records — the sales, bookings and other outcomes your flows recorded for that person.
That last item matters: the figures for this person drop out of your conversion reports too. You may want to take a report for a past period before deleting.
If a deleted person writes to you again, they come back as a new record — with no tags, no fields and no history, from scratch.
⚠️ Note: Deletion is not archiving. There is no undo, no bin and no recovery window. If you only want a record out of the way for a while, use a tag (archive, for example) and separate it with a filter instead of deleting.
What to check before deleting
Is there anything in the messaging you will need? An order number, an address, an agreed price. Move it out before deleting — and because notes are deleted too, move anything that must survive outside the panel.
Is this person in a sequence or waiting on a scheduled send? Deleting cancels those pending sends too; that is usually what you want, but do it knowingly.
Have you picked the right person? The same human's Instagram and WhatsApp cards are separate. Deleting one does not delete the other.
Do you only want to tidy the conversation? Deleting the contact is not the only option; closing the conversation is often enough.
Will you need a conversion report? Check the relevant period before deleting.
Personal data deletion requests
When a customer asks for their personal data to be deleted, the delete section on the contact card exists to satisfy that request: the person goes along with their messaging and every derived record.
Remember three things:
CSV files you downloaded earlier are not cleaned up. You have to delete the file too. See Exporting contacts to CSV.
The conversation on Instagram or WhatsApp is not deleted. Deleting from the panel does not remove the chat in Meta's own app; the history on the customer's phone stays as it is.
The deletion is written to the audit trail. Who deleted which record and when is kept in the portfolio's audit trail, which is where you show it if you have to document the request.
Limits and known issues
Deletion cannot be undone; there is no bin.
Only the owner and administrators can delete.
A contact outside your scope cannot be deleted; the card does not even open.
Bulk deletion handles at most 200 contacts per run and covers only the selected records.
Records deleted in the meantime are skipped in a bulk action and reported separately.
You cannot delete only part of a contact (only the messages, or only the notes); deletion covers the whole card.
The same human's card on the other channel is a separate record and must be deleted separately.
A worked example
An online shop receives a data deletion request:
The request arrives by e-mail; the customer gives their Instagram username.
The administrator searches for the username on the Contacts screen and opens the card.
They confirm it is the right person from the Channel info section.
The invoice details accounting needs are already in their own system, so nothing is taken from the panel.
They delete from the Delete contact section and confirm.
They search for a WhatsApp card belonging to the same customer and delete that too if it exists.
They delete the CSV file they downloaded last month from their computer.
They reply to the customer: "your records have been deleted".
Common mistakes
Treating deletion as archiving. It is permanent and cannot be reversed.
Deleting the card on only one channel. The same human's card on the other channel stays.
Forgetting to take information out of the messaging first. Messages and notes both go.
Forgetting a downloaded CSV file. Deleting in the panel does not clean up the file.
Assuming the chat on Meta's side is deleted too. It is not.
Assuming conversion figures are unaffected. This person's conversion records go too.
Deleting the wrong person. Read the name in the confirmation.