How Can I Delete a Board on Pinterest
The board and its pins go together. Archiving is the version of this that most people actually want.
How can I delete a board on Pinterest: open the board, use the edit control, and choose delete at the bottom of the panel. Confirming removes the board and every pin saved to it, with no undo, which is why archiving is usually the better move.
There is no undo and no recycle bin.
If you want the board out of your profile without losing the pins, archive it instead. Archived boards keep their pins, stop appearing on the profile, and can be restored at any time.
A profile rebuilt after a clear-out is judged on the one number left on it, which is the follower count. Followers on a Pinterest profile acts on that.
The pins-go-with-it rule is the part that costs people years of saving, and it is not obvious from the interface.
A pin saved to a board is not an independent object in your account that happens to sit there. It belongs to that board. Delete the board and the saves go with it. If the same image was saved only once, to that board, it is no longer in your account at all.
The original pin on Pinterest still exists, because it belongs to whoever created it. What you lose is your copy and any note you wrote on it.
Archiving exists for exactly this case. An archived board keeps every pin, disappears from the profile and from your main board list, and stops being suggested to you. Nothing is destroyed, and unarchiving puts it back where it was.
The third option, for a board that is mostly junk with a few things worth keeping, is to move the good pins to another board first. Bulk selection on the board makes that quick, and it is the only route that preserves exactly what you want.
Deleting a board
Open the board and use the edit control, which is the pencil near the board name.
The delete option is at the bottom of that panel, separated from the rest.
Confirm, and the board and its pins are removed from your account.
On mobile the same panel exists behind the edit control on the board page.
The control sits at the bottom of the edit panel, below everything else, which is deliberate. Pinterest has moved it more than once, and the reliable route is always through the board itself rather than through a profile-level settings menu.
Archiving instead
The same edit panel has an archive option.
An archived board keeps every pin, leaves your profile, and no longer appears in the board picker when you save something.
It is listed separately at the bottom of your boards, and unarchiving restores it with everything intact.
This is the right answer for a seasonal board, an old project, or anything you may want later.
Archived boards also stop appearing in the board picker when you save something new, which is the quiet benefit: a profile with four live boards is easier to use than one with forty, without losing any of the forty.
Archived boards are also excluded from the suggestions Pinterest builds from your saves, which is the practical reason to archive a board full of material from a project that ended. It stops shaping a feed you no longer want it to shape.
Saving the pins first
On a board, use the organize control to select pins in bulk.
Selected pins can be moved to another board or copied, which protects them before deletion.
Moving is instant and does not notify anybody.
For a large board this takes a few minutes and is the only way to delete the container without losing the contents.
Bulk selection has a ceiling per operation on some clients, so a board with hundreds of pins moves in batches rather than in one action. It is tedious and it is still faster than rebuilding a collection from memory.
Merging boards instead of deleting one
Most boards people want to delete are duplicates of another board, and merging is the operation that actually fits.
Pinterest has offered a merge that moves every pin from one board into another and removes the empty one. Where it is available it is the right tool, because nothing is lost and the destination board inherits the saves.
Where it is not, the manual version is the bulk organize control: select all, move to the other board, then delete the empty shell.
Merging has one consequence worth knowing. The destination board's name and description are what the merged pins are now filed under, and Pinterest uses that text to decide who sees them. Merging a specific board into a vague one can quietly reduce the reach of pins that were doing well.
So merge upward into the more specific board rather than into the general one, which is the opposite of what feels tidy.
Sections, group boards and what they complicate
A board section can be deleted on its own. Deleting the section offers to keep the pins on the board or remove them with it.
On a group board, only the creator can delete the board. Collaborators can leave it, which removes it from their profile without touching anybody else's.
Leaving a group board does not delete the pins you added; they stay on the board.
Removing a collaborator is done by the board's owner and is silent.
For a handful of saves rather than a whole board, deleting individual pins is the narrower tool, and if the goal is privacy rather than removal, making a board secret covers that setting.
What deletion does to your reach
Pins saved by other people from your board stay in their accounts and keep working.
Your own saves stop contributing to what Pinterest recommends to you, which changes your home feed over the following days.
For a business account, deleting a board with traffic removes a path people used to reach your site, and that traffic does not transfer.
Which is one more reason archiving is usually the better move for anything that was ever popular.
Which is the argument for archiving anything that ever worked. Rebuilding an audience from scratch is the expensive part, and followers on a Pinterest profile acts on it, alongside the rest of the Pinterest services we carry.
Pins you saved from other people keep working in their accounts regardless, because a save creates an independent object there. Deleting your board removes your copies and takes nothing away from anybody who saved from you.
Questions people ask about deleting boards
Does deleting a Pinterest board delete the pins?
Yes. Every pin saved to that board is removed with it, and there is no undo.
How do I hide a board without deleting it?
Archive it. The pins are kept, the board leaves your profile, and it can be restored at any time.
Can I recover a deleted board?
No. Deletion is permanent, which is why moving pins out or archiving is the safer route.
Can I delete a group board?
Only its creator can. Collaborators can leave it, which removes it from their profile only.
Do other people lose pins they saved from my board?
No. Pins saved into their own accounts are unaffected.
What happens to a board section?
Deleting a section asks whether to keep its pins on the board or remove them along with it.
Keep reading
- followers on a Pinterest profile — A profile rebuilt after a clear-out is judged on the one number left on it, and followers on a Pinterest profile acts on that.
- deleting individual pins — For a handful of saves rather than a whole board, deleting individual pins is the narrower tool.
- making a board secret — If the goal is privacy rather than removal, making a board secret covers that setting.