This article explains how to delete articles from the list. In Joomla, deletion of an article is a two stage process. The first stage sends it to the Trash. You then can remove it permanently from the Trash. 

Prerequisites

This applies to the list of articles, so what you need is a Joomla website with multiple articles.

Concepts

• Articles in Joomla are the main content types on a web page and can display text and images.
• Trashed is a status for Joomla articles; picture a trash can with your content in it
• A filter is a way to show articles matching your filter criteria, in this case Trashed

Steps

Moving the Article to Trash

1. Select Content -> Articles from the Administrator menu.
2. Select the checkbox to select the article you want to delete.
3. The Actions button in the toolbar gets enabled; select it to show the dropdown menu.
4. Select Trash in the dropdown menu.
   
   
   
   
   
5. You'll see a confirmation message
   
   
   
   
6. The article has disappeared from the current list of articles (this list does not normally include trashed items).

Find your trashed articles

At this stage of the process the article has not been completely removed. This is a helpful feature in case you deleted the article by mistake.

To see the list of trashed articles:

1. Select the Filter Options button to open the list of filters.
2. Select Trashed from the - Select Status - list.
   
   
   
   
3. You will now see all trashed articles.
   
   

Restoring your trashed article(s)

1. To restore, click the Trashed symbol in the Status column (or check the article, click Actions in the Toolbar and select Publish - this may come in handy if you want to restore multiple articles at once). 
   
   
   
   
2. The article will return to the Published state and disappear from the list of trashed articles.

Permanently delete the article

1. Select the checkbox in the left column of article data.
2. Now you see the Actions and Delete buttons in the Toolbar enabled. The Actions button, as mentioned above, allows you to apply the same action to all of the selected articles.
   
   
    
3. The Delete button is what you need to permanently remove your article. Click it.
4. A warning appears:
   
   
   
   
5. Select Yes to confirm and the article will be deleted from the Trash. The article will be deleted from the database forever and you won’t be able to get it back.
6. Click the Clear button next to Filter Options to return to the Articles list.

Bonus tips

• Consider why you want to delete the article:
  • Is it no longer needed? Then deletion is most likely the right course of action.
  • Is it an article that could be re-used in the future? Archive it instead. It can be very frustrating to know you had an article that would have been a good starting point for another but you deleted it.
• Deleting an article is not the same as archiving an article. Once it has been deleted from Trash it’s gone for good.
• Joomla will not let you save more than one article with the same alias. If an article is deleted but left in the Trash, it still exists. So when you try to save a new article and you get an error stating the alias already exists, and you can’t find it, it may very well be in the Trash! In that case you could remove it from Trash or use a different alias for your new article.
• Joomla keeps previous versions of an article (if Versioning is enabled, which is the default setting on most Joomla websites). If you want to delete an article because it somehow "broke", try reverting it back to a previous version instead.