Deletion of material

Question

Hi my client is having over 4000 material, out of which 1500 are not in transactions since last few years. They don't need these materials. Also it shouldn't appear in any reports. How to do this?
We can do flag for deletion in MM06 but it will be for 1 material at a time & i'm not sure whether it will fulfill client's requirement.
Please guide
Thanks & Regards,
Piyush

Answer 1

Hi,
Before Archiving the Material Master the materials need to be flagged for deletion as told earlier in T Code MM06/MM16 .
Archving the materials is done thro T Code SARA. All the SAP archive functions are shown in SARA. Choose the corresponding SAP archive object, hit enter and the archive administration menu will be shown.
When a material is no longer required in a company or plant, you can archive and delete the material master record.
Before a material master record can be archived and deleted, other objects (such as purchasing documents) that refer to this material must themselves be archived. You can see which objects these are and the dependencies between them in the network graphic.
If a material master record cannot be archived and deleted at a given organizational level, the reason is given in the log (for example, a purchase order exists for the material). The log also contains technical data such as the number of material master records read and the number deleted.
Some of the archive error log message :-
Costing data exists
Use in routing
Use in sales and distribution
Use in bill of material
Delivery exists
Costing data exists
Info record exists
Purchase order exists
The Archiving steps :-
Archiving object MM_MATNR for archiving material master records.
You can display the archived data, but not reload it.
To archive the material master, first goto transaction MM71.
Type in a variant name and click Maintain. (Tick the Test Mode for archive simulation).
Save the variant.
Maintain the Start date and Spool parameters and click execute.
Click Goto Job Overview to check the archive status.
To do a permanent delete, goto transaction SARA and click Delete button.
Maintain the Archive Selection, Start date and Spool parameters.
Click Test Session for testing or click execute to start the deletion program.
Click Goto Job Overview to check the delete status.
This need to be done carefully and better to first do it in testing client .
After archiving those materials will not be dispalyed in reports unless categorically  selected
Dhruba