How to Delete a VICIdial List (and What Happens to Its Leads)

Deleting a list in VICIdial is one of the few actions you cannot quietly undo. It is deliberately a two-step process, and the part people miss is that it does not just remove the list, it removes every lead inside that list too. Before you click, it pays to understand exactly what disappears and what your safer options are.

This is not a reason to be afraid of the delete button. It is a reason to be sure you actually want a delete and not something gentler.

The two-step delete

If your user account has the option enabled, scroll to the bottom of the list modification page and you will see a DELETE THIS LIST link. Clicking it does not delete anything yet. The page reloads with a confirmation link at the top, and only when you click that second DELETE THIS LIST link is the list actually removed. The two clicks exist to stop accidental deletions, so treat the second one as the real one.

1. Open the list's modification page and confirm you are on the right List ID.
2. Scroll to the bottom and click DELETE THIS LIST.
3. Read the confirmation that appears at the top, then click the second DELETE THIS LIST to commit.

What happens to the leads

This is the headline: deleting the list also deletes any leads in the system within that list. Each Lead in that Lead list is gone along with the list record. Their call history, their statuses, the lot. There is no leftover bucket of orphaned leads to recover from.

Export first if the data matters

Before any delete you are unsure about, download the list. The download link at the bottom of the list modification page exports every record and every field from the underlying lead table to a file you can open in a spreadsheet. That gives you a copy of the contacts and their history even after the list itself is gone. Walk through it in downloading a VICIdial list.

Keep in mind that one thing a delete does not do for you is scrub numbers from your do-not-call records. Deleting a list removes leads, but any number a customer asked you to stop calling belongs in your internal do-not-call list, not just gone from one bucket. Manage that separately through your DNC list so a re-loaded contact does not get called again by mistake.

Often you want a softer option

Most of the time when people reach for delete, what they really want is "stop dialing this list," not "erase these contacts forever." In that case, deactivate the list instead. Setting Active to N keeps every lead and all its history but takes the list out of dialing. You can always turn it back on later. Decide which you need before you commit.

flowchart TD
  A[Want to stop using a list?] --> B{Need the leads later?}
  B -->|Yes| C[Set Active to N]
  C --> D[List stops dialing, leads kept]
  B -->|No, but export to be safe| E[Download the list]
  E --> F[Click DELETE THIS LIST]
  F --> G[Confirm second time]
  G --> H[List and all its leads removed]

To compare deactivating with deleting and see exactly where the Active toggle lives, read modifying a VICIdial list. For the wider context on how lists and leads fit together, see the lists and leads guide.

Your data, your server

On a single-tenant box, your lead data stays on your own machine where you control backups and exports. We provision a dedicated, secured VICIdial server in under 40 seconds, so destructive actions are always yours to plan around, not a shared-platform surprise. See plans and pricing.