Disabling Publishing and Distribution

Use the Disable Publishing and Distribution Wizard, Replication Management Objects (RMO), or Transact-SQL system stored procedures on the Distributor to do the following:

  • Delete all distribution databases on the Distributor.

  • Disable all Publishers that use the Distributor and delete all publications on those Publishers.

  • Delete all subscriptions to the publications. Data in the publication and subscription databases will not be deleted; however, it loses its synchronization relationship to any publication databases. If you want the data at the Subscriber to be deleted, you must delete it manually.

Note

To disable publishing and distribution, all distribution and publication databases must be online. If any database snapshots exist for distribution or publication databases, they must be dropped before disabling publishing and distribution. A database snapshot is a read-only offline copy of a database and is not related to a replication snapshot. For more information, see Database Snapshots.

To disable publishing and distribution