MySQL - delete row where column is empty string (blank)

In this article, we would like to show you how to delete a row where the column is an empty string in MySQL.

Quick solution:

DELETE FROM `table_name` WHERE `column_name` = '';

If your column is NULL then the below query works:

DELETE FROM `table_name` WHERE `column_name` IS NULL;

Practical example

To show how to delete rows with an empty string values, we will use the following table:

Note:

At the end of this article you can find database preparation SQL queries.

Example

In this example, we will delete rows from users table with empty email column.

Query:

DELETE FROM `users` WHERE `email` = '';

Result:

Database preparation

create_tables.sql file:

CREATE TABLE `users` (
	`id` INT(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
	`name` VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
	`surname` VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
	`email` VARCHAR(50),
	PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
);

insert_data.sql file:

INSERT INTO `users`
	( `name`, `surname`, `email`)
VALUES
	('John', 'Stewart', 'john@email.com'),
	('Chris', 'Brown', ''),
	('Kate', 'Lewis',''),
	('Ailisa', 'Gomez', 'ailisa@email.com'),
	('Gwendolyn', 'James', ''),
	('Simon', 'Collins', ''),
	('Taylor', 'Martin',''),
	('Andrew', 'Thompson', 'andrew123@email.com');