unable to delete node labels in neo4j

Question

I have created 2 labels Person,Movies by :

CREATE (ee:Person { name: "test", id: "1" })

CREATE (m:Movie { name: "movie_1", id: "2" })

When I Run :

START n=node(*)
OPTIONAL MATCH (n)-[r]-()
DELETE n,r;

But The Label still exists. How can I delete the label?

Answer 1

So, you don't actually delete labels you remove them (e.g. remove m:Movie). delete is used to remove nodes and/or relationships from the database.

The following cypher example will match your movie node, remove the existing label, add a new one and return the node. When it is returned you can see that it has a different label.

match (m:Movie) 
remove m:Movie
set m:FavouriteMovie
return m

Check out the reference card neo4j.com/docs/stable/cypher-refcard/ and search for REMOVE.

Answer 2

Labels not deleting are often caused by un-removed indexes. For example, if you have an index personID on the Person Node Label

DROP INDEX ON :Person(personID)