Delete all nodes and relationships in neo4j 1.8

for a big database you should either remove the database from the disk (after you stop the engine first I guess) or use in Cypher something like:

MATCH (n)
OPTIONAL MATCH (n)-[r]-()
WITH n,r LIMIT 50000
DELETE n,r
RETURN count(n) as deletedNodesCount

see https://zoomicon.wordpress.com/2015/04/18/howto-delete-all-nodes-and-relationships-from-neo4j-graph-database/ for some more info I've gathered on this from various answers

As of 2.3.0 and up to 3.3.0

MATCH (n)
DETACH DELETE n

Docs

Pre 2.3.0

MATCH (n)
OPTIONAL MATCH (n)-[r]-()
DELETE n,r

Docs

you are probably doing it correct, only the dashboard shows just the higher ID taken, and thus the number of "active" nodes, relationships, although there are none. it is just informative.

to be sure you have an empty graph, run this command:

START n=node(*) return count(n);
START r=rel(*) return count(r);

if both give you 0, your deletion was succesfull.