(MSSQL) query to remove categories containing old tickets

Hi All,

we are currently using SD+ 7504 on MSSQL2005. In the past we made some bad category/sub-category decisions so I wanted to delete some old and unused categories from the system.

Deleting does not work in the GUI since old/closed tickets are still using those categories and thus they are merely 'greyed out' in the GUI.

is there a way to remove the categories i do not wish to use anymore including the tickets still assigned to them? I can create reports to see which tickets are using those but to manually remove 1000 tockets is a lot of work.

So I would like to do something like remove categories "fax", "computer", "printer" including all tickets assigned to them.

thanks,
stefan.