﻿---
title: Drop fields from events
description: The drop_fields processor specifies which fields to drop if a certain condition is fulfilled. The condition is optional. If it’s missing, the specified...
url: https://docs-v3-preview.elastic.dev/elastic/docs-content/pull/5313/reference/fleet/drop_fields-processor
products:
  - Elastic Agent
  - Fleet
applies_to:
  - Elastic Cloud Serverless: Generally available
  - Elastic Stack: Generally available
---

# Drop fields from events
The `drop_fields` processor specifies which fields to drop if a certain condition is fulfilled. The condition is optional. If it’s missing, the specified fields are always dropped. The `@timestamp` and `type` fields cannot be dropped, even if they show up in the `drop_fields` list.

## Example

```yaml
  - drop_fields:
      when:
        condition
      fields: ["field1", "field2", ...]
      ignore_missing: false
```

<note>
  If you define an empty list of fields under `drop_fields`, no fields are dropped.
</note>


## Configuration settings

<note>
  Elastic Agent processors execute *before* ingest pipelines, which means that your processor configurations cannot refer to fields that are created by ingest pipelines or Logstash. For more limitations, refer to [What are some limitations of using processors?](/elastic/docs-content/pull/5313/reference/fleet/agent-processors#limitations)
</note>


| Name             | Required | Default | Description                                                                                                                                                                                                          |
|------------------|----------|---------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| `fields`         | Yes      |         | If non-empty, a list of matching field names will be removed. Any element in array can contain a regular expression delimited by two slashes (*/reg_exp/*), in order to match (name) and remove more than one field. |
| `ignore_missing` | No       | `false` | If `true`, the processor ignores missing fields and does not return an error.                                                                                                                                        |

See [Conditions](/elastic/docs-content/pull/5313/reference/fleet/dynamic-input-configuration#conditions) for a list of supported conditions.