removing old customer records

How can I remove a range of customer or order records?

What if I want to delete all the old orders, say everything before 2007 ?
Or delete the customer records of all customers before 2006 etc.

It seems strange not to see any management tools for working with these
records by date or something but I have yet to see anything.

We have thousands of customer accounts and what happens is that a customer
can buy once and their account will stay there forever.

Am I missing some function to manage this?

Thanks,
Sheryl

I don't know what the rules for the UK are, but in the US most, if not all, business records need to be saved for 7 years.

You can use phpMyAdmin to download those records to a disc and then delete them if you think that is neccessary - however you need to make sure you get all the records that are associated with each other or you will end up with orphaned data.

Kim:

I don't know what the rules for the UK are, but in the US most, if not all, business records need to be saved for 7 years.

You can use phpMyAdmin to download those records to a disc and then delete them if you think that is neccessary - however you need to make sure you get all the records that are associated with each other or you will end up with orphaned data.

Well, first of all, I cannot imagine that anyone here who runs a business is relying on one singular
zen cart database as their entire source of records :)
But basically no, you are required to keep the records needed to file an accurate tax return and that's
it. (and 'business records' as in expenses for deductions, leases, bank accounts, merchant accounts, etc.
are very different from personal data on customers, there are no 'business records' as such stored
in zen cart)

Quite the opposite is true of customer's personal data where the government are much more concerned with security
and privacy so the less information about customers that is stored anywhere, the better.

FYI - I have numerous copies and more importantly everything is stored in an Access database
in the office (of which we also have multiple copies). But that is not due to any requirement it is solely
for the convenience of customers when they re-order and for our marketing purposes.