Deleting CosmosDB Record in python
12:10 07 Dec 2025

I am trying to do a simple delete in CosmosDB but its saying that my partition key is incorrect.

  # Initialize client
endpoint = cosmos_endpoint
key = cosmos_key
client = CosmosClient(endpoint, key)
database = client.get_database_client(cosmos_database_name)
container = database.get_container_client(cosmos_container_name)


# Query for items where brother = "JTJr"
query = "SELECT * FROM c WHERE c.brother = 'JTJr'"
items = list(container.query_items(query=query, enable_cross_partition_query=True))

deleted_count = 0

for item in items:
    try:
        # Delete using id and partition key
        container.delete_item(
            item=item['id'],
            partition_key=item['id']
        )
        deleted_count += 1
        print(f"Deleted item: {item['id']}")
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Error deleting item {item['id']}: {str(e)}")

print(f"Total deleted: {deleted_count}")

The query returns 800 records however when it tries to delete it fails.

I have tried different partition keys but nothing works eg. "Id","id",item["id"]. This is the insert item

container = database.create_container_if_not_exists(
    id=cosmos_container_name,
    partition_key=PartitionKey(path="/Id")
)

documents = [
    {
        "id": str(id + index),  # Start ID from 999
        "header": row.header
    }]

 result = container.upsert_item(body=document)
    
python azure-cosmosdb delete-row