Haven't thought about this. I suppose you could use the Link Maintenance Utility, sort by date and then select from the oldest until a certain date and then delete them. If you make a copy of the PDF directory then you'll always have the PDFs.

If you review other posts regarding this utility, as well as the Paperless Office Viewer, you will see that they are very clunky programs and prone to memory overloads and crashing, but it might be worth a try, in small bites.

If the reason you are asking is slow load times for the Paperless viewers, make sure you disable all the "Load Data..." options, and enter narrowed filters before clicking Refresh.

In addition to rwclowe's tip of using Link Maintenance, you should also be able to delete rows using the Paperless Viewer programs... and if you move the PDF's to an archive sub-folder before doing so, there should be no risk of them being deleted.

I don't know why I never noticed this before... possibly a new feature (image below is v2023).

Cullen thanks very much.  Most of the crashing was occurring at the time the PDFs were generating and possibly as records were appended to the log.

Thanks Kevin.  Yes the backup folder for the older PDFS is the key.  I have to keep them for the converts.  I remember the walls of binders that this replaced and the reluctance of many to let go of the process.

I saw this.  I think it is even present in 2020, but I had initially thought this would delete the files as well.  But your previous answer about the backup folder was the key.  Thanks.

The Purge PDF Documents task has been in Paperless Office since the introduction of that module.

Well... I never noticed it before. 

Me either.  I did not know we had that purge feature.