Magento: Remove all categories from a store

magento_removeAllCategories.sql

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 0;
TRUNCATE TABLE `catalog_category_entity`;
TRUNCATE TABLE `catalog_category_entity_datetime`;
TRUNCATE TABLE `catalog_category_entity_decimal`;
TRUNCATE TABLE `catalog_category_entity_int`;
TRUNCATE TABLE `catalog_category_entity_text`;
TRUNCATE TABLE `catalog_category_entity_varchar`;
TRUNCATE TABLE `catalog_category_product`;
TRUNCATE TABLE `catalog_category_product_index`;
  
INSERT INTO `catalog_category_entity`
  (`entity_id`,`entity_type_id`,`attribute_set_id`,`parent_id`,`created_at`,`updated_at`,`path`,`POSITION`,`level`,`children_count`) 
VALUES 
  (1,3,0,0,'0000-00-00 00:00:00','2009-02-20 00:25:34','1',1,0,1),
  (2,3,3,0,'2009-02-20 00:25:34','2009-02-20 00:25:34','1/2',1,1,0);
 
INSERT INTO `catalog_category_entity_int`
  (`value_id`,`entity_type_id`,`attribute_id`,`store_id`,`entity_id`,`value`) 
VALUES 
  (1,3,32,0,2,1),
  (2,3,32,1,2,1);
 
INSERT INTO `catalog_category_entity_varchar`
  (`value_id`,`entity_type_id`,`attribute_id`,`store_id`,`entity_id`,`value`) 
VALUES 
  (1,3,31,0,1,'Root Catalog'),
  (2,3,33,0,1,'root-catalog'),
  (3,3,31,0,2,'Default Category'),
  (4,3,39,0,2,'PRODUCTS'),
  (5,3,33,0,2,'default-category');
SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 1;

Worked a treat on Magento 1.9 Thank you.

Beautiful, worked just perfect on 1.9, thanks!

wow! this is a nice idea! I kept writing php scripts to to do these which took lot of time...did you get this from the sql dump? ;)

It worked nicely on EE 1.14.2.1 as well