Mercury Documentation

The app “Unused contents”

The Unused contents app is available in the OpenCms Launchpad. It can be used to find and delete unused content.

View of the app “Unused contents”

Content - e.g., a content section or a link sequence - is considered “unused” if it is not used on any container page and is not linked to by any other content.

The app checks the use of content in both the Offline and the Online project. For content to be considered unused, it must not be linked in any of these projects.

There are content elements that are not used directly on container pages but are displayed indirectly with lists, e.g., articles. Such content is always considered “used content” and is therefore not handled by the app.

The “Unused Content” app can be accessed in two ways:

  1. Using the Launchpad.  
  2. In Explorer view, using the context menu, by clicking the menu item Advanced > Delete unused contents.  

Site: The select box specifies the site in which to search for unused content.

Search folder: The selection field is used to specify a subfolder from the previously selected site.

Resource type: The select box restricts the search to a specific resource type. If no resource type is selected, all types are searched.

Filter: The filter field at the top right can be used to search the data in the Path, Title, Type, and Type (internal) columns in the results table.

There are two ways to delete content:

  1. With the Delete all button. This button first selects all content from the results table, taking into account the search and filter settings selected by the user as described above. A delete dialog box then opens, listing the selected content to be deleted. Clicking the Delete button in the dialog box deletes the listed content.
  2. Individual items can also be deleted using the context menu of the results table. The context menu opens by clicking on the resource icon in the first column of the results table.

If you assign the value keep to the NavInfo property for a piece of content, this content will no longer appear in the list of unused contents.

To remove the entry from the list after you have set this property, click the Search button on the left. Be sure to do this before clicking the Delete all button. This button deletes all content currently displayed in the list.

For technical reasons, a search for unused content cannot be performed in the root folders /, /sites/, /shared/, and /system/.