Last updated July 28, 2026
This erases every leader in the drawing in one keystroke. No selection, no confirmation — you type the command and they are gone.
It is one of a set of four single-purpose strippers on this site, alongside the ones for text, mtext and dimensions. All four work the same way and all four have the same lack of a safety net.
It will miss most leaders on a modern drawing
This is the important one, and it is not obvious from anything on the download page.
AutoCAD has two different kinds of leader. The original LEADER object dates from the early releases. The multileader arrived later, brought the text and the arrow together into one object, and became the default — it is what you get from the MLEADER command and from the leader tools on the ribbon.
This routine asks for the old kind only. Run it on a drawing annotated with multileaders and it will report that there are no leaders to delete, which is technically true and practically useless.
So it is the right tool for stripping an older drawing, or one from a consultant still working the old way, and the wrong tool for anything annotated recently. If you want it to catch multileaders as well, the entity name it filters on is a single word in the file and adding a second type is a small edit.
What it catches
Within that limit, it is thorough. The search runs against the whole drawing database rather than what is visible, so leaders on frozen layers, on switched-off layers and in layouts all go along with the ones you can see.
That is what makes it useful for cleaning up a drawing you have been given, where the whole point is that you do not know what is hiding in there. It is also why you should save first.
Note that a plain LEADER object and the text at the end of it are separate objects. Deleting the leaders leaves the annotation text behind, floating where the arrows used to point. If you want both gone, run the text stripper afterwards.
Command reference
The command is DELLEAD. Neither the file name nor the listing title tells you that, which is worth knowing before you go hunting for a command called Delete Leader.
It uses AutoCAD’s own ERASE command rather than a low-level delete, so an immediate U brings everything back — provided you notice straight away.
How to load it
Unzip the download and load the .lsp file with APPLOAD. Load it when you need it rather than leaving it in the Startup Suite — a command that strips annotation drawing-wide is not one to have quietly available in every session. Our AutoLISP guide covers loading.
Step-by-step usage
- Save the drawing, or work on a copy.
- Type DELLEAD.
- Every old-style leader is erased immediately. If there are none it reports “No leaders in this drawing!” — which may mean they are all multileaders.
- Check your layouts and frozen layers, since those were included.
- If it was a mistake, type U straight away.
Compatibility notes
Six lines of the most basic AutoLISP there is, driving ERASE. Nothing in it can break; the only question is the leader type it looks for, covered above.
No dialog boxes and no Express Tools calls, so nothing requires the full product; LT users on LT 2024 or later, the release that brought AutoLISP to LT, should be able to run it. See what runs on AutoCAD LT.
Download
| Name: | Delete All Leaders |
| Description: | Erase all leaders in a drawing. |
| Type: | AutoCAD AutoLISP Routine |
| Author: | Anon |
| File Size: | 1 Kb |
| Cost: | Free |
| Worked on: | AutoCAD |
| Download File: | Delete Leader.zip |
Related routines
- Delete All Text — the text left behind when the leaders go.
- Delete All Dimensions — the same idea for dimensions.
- Delete Layer — strip by layer rather than by object type.