Removing Associations from bulk contacts

[JMurtagh]

Hi all, 

I'm in desperate need of help solving the below - 

I'm trying to remove a company association from a large number of contacts and wish to bulk edit them. Is there a way to do this without having to manually go into each contact and remove their association? We are on the free plan. 

Many thanks! 

J

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @JMurtagh,

I'm not aware of any special features to accomplish this, unfortunately. Depending on how many associations this is about, your options would either be manually removing them via the record association sidebar (and sacrificing some time on this dull task) or potentially even deleting the company record before re-creating it, fresh, without assocations. In that case you would however lose any information specific to the company record.

(As you can see here, bulk association options are limited, too.)

Best regards!

[PChat]

This looked like a good solution. Unfortunately I get error 401 "unauthorized" when I test the custom workflow against a test company. Following the instructions provided, I told the workflow to use the stored secret (for the private app I created at the earlier step). Is the error because I haven't put the access token anywhere in the code... if required that step wasn't provided by the poster?

[DStaat]

Hey @JMurtagh,

Bit of an old thread but have you tried using Associ8? It can automatically remove associations.

I'll leave some documentation for the feature below if you want to see it in action:

- Remove Associations Automatically Using Labels 

Let me know if you have any questions!

Best,

-David Staat

[jjones41]

I needed something similar and drafted a very simple API script to accomplish this via a custom code action on a workflow. Basically, you create a triggerless workflow with only a single, custom code action. Any time you need to remove all the associated contacts from a company, you open the workflow and enroll the company. This does NOT consider association labels. It simply removes all associations. In my case, I needed to remove the company's association to hundreds of contacts and keep only three, so I removed them all with a click or two and then manually added back the three associations I needed.

One benefit of this is it saves all history on the company and contact records as it doesn't require any record deletion. 

You can find the code and a brief readme on how to use it here. Very simple. Hope it helps.

[ManuelI]

Hi @jmik,

I ran into the same problem and solved it with the API call you can find here, under "Delete Specific Labels":

https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/api/crm/associations

I basically extracted all the Id-pairs (from object Id, to object id) and then made the call to the API to remove the label. I had 2.6 k cases of labels that needed to be removed and that saved me a lot of time 🙂 

Hope that helps.  

[DianaGomez]

Hi @ManuelI hope you are doing well!

Thanks for sharing 🙂

Best,

Diana

[MWeddup]

I know this is an old topic, but having run into the same sort of problem, the ability to bulk delete the associations by type e.g "deal_to_contact" or just being able to make an API Batch command to delete more than 1 association at a time would be a really nice change to the API 

[DianaGomez]

Hi @MWeddup hope you are doing well!

Since this is an old thread I encourage you to create a new conversation, this way it will be seen by more users 🙂 please make sure to add context, screenshots if possible and all the details you can.

Best,

Diana

[HelenTansley]

The only issue with deleting the company is that you would loose any history. We have a similar problem but not all contacts associated to the company are wrong. The only "quick" way i have found is having list of contacts on one screen and then on another screen navigating to the company record and bulk removing the association

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @JMurtagh,

I'm not aware of any special features to accomplish this, unfortunately. Depending on how many associations this is about, your options would either be manually removing them via the record association sidebar (and sacrificing some time on this dull task) or potentially even deleting the company record before re-creating it, fresh, without assocations. In that case you would however lose any information specific to the company record.

(As you can see here, bulk association options are limited, too.)

Best regards!

[JMurtagh]

Hi Karsten, 

Many thanks for your quick reply. There are over 1,600 people to remove so would be very time-consuming. I think you are right that the best way forward would be to remove the company completely and start from fresh. Is there an easy way to do this? I'm new to Hubspot so am still trying to figure everything out. 

Many thanks! 🙂 

J

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @JMurtagh,

You would simply search and delete the company from the company index page (Menu > Contacts > Companies). From that same screen, you can then create a new company record and associate with the correct contacts.

Hope this helps!

[JMurtagh]

Many thanks! Have a lovely day. 

Jess

[karstenkoehler]

Thanks, you too!