So I am always confused by SQL Server's ability to monitor articles in a transactional Replication publication. Say I have three tables A, B, and C. And there was a snapshot last taken 3 weeks ago. I no longer need C so I remove the article from the publication. I even get a warning saying: "You need to create a snapshot as your publication has changed!". Yes, cool, I realize that. I go to create a new snapshot and it tells me: "You have no subscriptions that need to be re initialized at this time" (facepalm).
Is it forcing me to reinitialize and there is nothing I can do about it? Because this seems kind of nuts I can add articles and it can create snapshots and adjust on the fly, but not the other way for data loss. I am in a test environment so I am perfectly fine re initializing a subscription. But in a production environment for dozens of environments this seems crazy to just remove two articles no longer used. Does anyone know of a workaround? I am novice with replication but understand TSQL fairly well and how to get around SSMS enough to get to things and follow things I could change in the distribution database if needed.