CRM 2011 - Deleting managed solution without losing data

Question

I would like to know if there is a way to delete a solution in CRM Dynamics 2011 without losing all the data. Here is what happened.

• The organization has a managed solution deployed since mid june. It's called "Solution 1".
• Solution 1 contains many entities. One of the entities is called "Entity 1".
• Another managed solution was deployed yesterday. It is called "Solution 2".
• Solution 2 contains only one entity : "Entity 1".

I would like to be able to delete solution 2 without losing the Entity 1 and it's data.

How?

Answer 1

Removing Solution 2 should not delete Entity 1 since it is defined by Solution 1. It will however remove any new customizations you've made to Entity 1 that are not included in Solution 1.

Basically your Solution 2 is like a "hold" solution in the sense of this blog. The blog describes how to remove an attribute from a entity without removing the entity. In your case, you're just removing the "hold" solution instead of completing the process.

Answer 2

You should look at the 'ALM for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011' (see http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39044) Search in the document for 'Hotfix by deleting a component'