LEX Online Manual Content

Delete Object

This option deletes all objects which are currently selected in the object list. If the focus is set to the tree view window, the currently selected container will be deleted. This includes child objects and subtrees which may exists under the regarding objects. Since this might be an irreversible change to the directory, please read very carefully the notes below about object removals.

Object deletion warning

You will be asked if you really want to remove the object(s) from the directory, even if you say Yes here, another warning comes up if LEX detects that there are child objects under one of the selected objects.

Object with children deletion warning

Before you choose not to see this warning any more, you should carefully read the notes below about object removals. Once you deactivated the warnings, you can activate them again in the menu option Tools - Options - Dialogs.

ATTENTION: LEX cannot undo a delete operation in the directory. The reason is that in every directory system, there are unique attributes which cannot be written by an LDAP client, even when he's authenticated as a very high privileged user.

A user object for example could have some kind of global unique ID, or a security identifier, or the values for the objects creation time. All these attributes cannot be set by LEX - regardless which permission you have. So when a user was deleted, it is literally impossible to create an identical object to undo the user deletion. However, there might be directory-specific ways to resurrect a deleted object (for example the Active Directory Recycle Bin which can be used since Windows Server 2008 R2). But remember: these possibilities depends on the directory service, LEX itself CANNOT UNDO AN OBJECT DELETION!

During the delete operation, you see the progress and can abort it every time:

Object deletion progress output

To delete objects, you can also use the Delete object button or press the DELETE key.

There may be situations where the Delete Object option may be disabled. This might be if the LEX ReadOnly Mode is active, or when the application focus lays on the attribute list.