Unless you are deleting an entire page permanently, as described in the Deleting Pages write-up, it is strongly recommended that you do NOT delete any documents or files you have associated with your page. Why? Because your page's Revision history relies on the existence of the files in order to maintain an active, accurate list of Revision points to which you can roll back your page if needed.

Please note that while you can unlink content from a page, as well as from a page's revision history, the file itself is still on your site and accessible via search engines. In late 2017, Drupal Core uncovered conflicts resulting in bugs indicating that files could not be deleted.

Need a file urgently and permanently deleted?

Site managers have two options in the event that a file contains information that may be sensitive in nature that it may need to be permanently removed for health or legal reasons in a timely manner:

1. Use UC Davis' Box.com instead as this gives you greater oversight and access to your file content. It is also secure and can be worked on by a team of people with varying levels of permission, or
2. Contact the SiteFarm team to request a special module be enabled for managing critical file content. Please note we will discuss your use case and determine if this should be permanently enabled, or if you should move your file content to Box.com. When contacting SiteFarm, please be sure to add "Urgent File Deletion: Please respond ASAP" so we can assist you quickly. If the module has been added to your site and you are a Site Manager, please refer to the documentation on Fancy File Delete and note the step at the end advising you to contact SiteFarm so we can clear your deleted file from all of our caching services, such as Varnish and Fastly.