 <p>It's depend on what you exactly mean under "deleting of all rows". The method <a href="http://www.trirand.com/jqgridwiki/doku.php?id=wiki%3amethods#add_on_grid_methods" rel="nofollow">GridUnload</a> could be very helpful in many cases, but it delete more as only grid contain.</p> <p>Another method used intern in jqGrid is:</p> <pre><code>var trf = $("#list tbody:first tr:first")[0]; $("#list tbody:first").empty().append(trf); </code></pre> <p>Probably it is what you need. It delete all grid rows excepting of the first one. You can overwrite the code also as the following</p> <pre><code>var myGrid = $("#list"); // the variable you probably have already somewhere var gridBody = myGrid.children("tbody"); var firstRow = gridBody.children("tr.jqgfirstrow"); gridBody.empty().append(firstRow); </code></pre>