The Scenario
You're a project manager closing out a legacy product that's been retired. The workspace is full of archived stories from the old project — 200 of them — and they need to be permanently deleted before the workspace gets reorganized. You've already pulled the story IDs into a Google Sheet. Now comes the part where you actually remove them.
The bad version:
- Open Shortcut. Navigate to the archived stories view. Search for the first ID in the list.
- Click the story. Find the delete option buried in the three-dot menu. Confirm deletion.
- Search for the next ID. Realize the search is slow and requires you to navigate back to archived stories first each time.
- Get to story 40 and realize you accidentally deleted one story that was archived but still being referenced by another team's active epic.
Two hundred individual deletions, each one a navigation exercise, each one a potential mistake.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Google Sheet. It reads the story IDs from the sheet and calls the Shortcut bulk delete endpoint — writing back a confirmation for each successful deletion.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Delete all archived Shortcut story IDs listed in column A of my sheet using the bulk delete endpoint and write "deleted" into column B for each one
What You Get
- Each story ID in column A permanently deleted from Shortcut
- "deleted" written into column B for each successful deletion
- Rows where the story ID was invalid, not found, or not in archived state flagged in column B with the reason
- A sidebar count of how many deletions succeeded and how many had errors
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
You want to verify stories are actually archived before deleting them
For each story ID in column A, check whether the Shortcut story is in an archived state. If it is, delete it and write "deleted" in column B. If it isn't archived, write "skipped — not archived" in column B and do not delete it.
You want to process in batches of 50 to stay within API limits
Delete Shortcut story IDs in column A in batches of 50, pausing between batches. Write "deleted" into column B as each story is removed and note any errors in column C.
You need to log which epic each story was linked to before deletion
For each story ID in column A, retrieve the story's epic association before deleting it. Write the epic name into column B. Then delete the story and write "deleted" in column C. If the story has no epic, write "no epic" in column B.
Delete stories and update a tracking column with the deletion date
Delete all Shortcut story IDs in column A. For each successful deletion, write "deleted" in column B and today's date in column C. For any errors, write the error reason in column B and leave column C blank.
The critical safety feature here is the column B log — it shows you exactly what was deleted and what was skipped, so you can review the result before the workspace is reorganized.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your archived story ID sheet, then ask it to run the deletions. See also Bulk Update Shortcut Stories From a Google Sheet or return to the Shortcut integration overview.