Before you can delete a primary article from a publication, you must first:
Delete all replicate articles that subscribe to that primary article in that publication
Suspend the primary database connection that contains the publication that the primary article resides in
Because a primary article can reside in more than one publication, you can delete a primary article from one publication without deleting it from other publications. To be removed from the primary database, a primary article must be deleted from all publications it resides in.
You must suspend the database connection before you
delete a primary article. See “Suspending and resuming database connections” for more information.
To delete a primary article, use sp_dropprimaryart and specify the publication name and the name of the primary article:
sp_dropprimaryart pub_name, pri_art
where pub_name is the name of the publication, and pri_art is the name of the primary article.
The sp_dropprimaryart procedure gives you the option of deleting all primary articles in a publication.
To delete all primary articles in a publication, use sp_dropprimaryart and specify only the publication name:
sp_dropprimaryart pub_name
where pub_name is the name of the publication you want to delete all primary articles from.
