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PowerShell Basics: How to Delete Microsoft Teams Cache for All Users

AnthonyBartolo's avatar
AnthonyBartolo
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Jul 14, 2020

Sometimes there is a need to delete Microsoft Teams cache to quicken the adoption of an in-band policy change or simply troubleshoot an issue. The challenge here is that the cache for Microsoft Teams is in multiple directories. This can be done manually but would result in a slow and tedious process. Again, we turn to PowerShell to automate this process and this time it's a one-liner that addresses this opportunity. 

 

Get-ChildItem "C:\Users\*\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\*" -directory | Where name -in ('application cache','blob storage','databases','GPUcache','IndexedDB','Local Storage','tmp') | ForEach{Remove-Item $_.FullName -Recurse -Force -WhatIf}

 

The end of the one-liner calls a -WhatIf which can be removed to enforce deletion.

 

As always, please share your comments below on bettering the above script or any questions you may have.

 

Updated May 04, 2021
Version 9.0
Anthony Bartolo
powershell
  • georgesr's avatar
    georgesr
    Copper Contributor
    Sep 28, 2022

    Good day,

    can you help me, I need to clear the cache of an email account that starts with Microsoft teams and is connected in sync with a Yealink vp59 annex or telephone, I need to clear its cache since there are several contacts that no longer exist and they were given low. I hope your prompt help

  • BlackV's avatar
    BlackV
    Brass Contributor
    Jul 27, 2022
    WARNING: The first command kills outlook and teams processes for the current user.

    dmitrygancho no your script does not do that, it stops outlook and teams for the person RUNNING the script, the current user would be the person that is logged into the pc

     

    i.e. id you ran 

    Enter-PSSession -computername yyy

     then ran the script 

    $env:UserName

    is the person running the script, not the current user of the pc 

  • Idreesma's avatar
    Idreesma
    Copper Contributor
    Jul 11, 2022

    Hi px091,

     

    How did you run this script to all machines in your company?

     

    Regards,

     

  • px091's avatar
    px091
    Iron Contributor
    Jun 07, 2022
     
    Hello, Based on this discussion and people's input, I have come up with the following code. The initial testing works fine on my laptop. I am planning to run this script to all machines in my company. Is there anything can cause this script fail to clear teams cache? Thanks in advance,
     

    # stop Teams

    Stop-Process -Name Teams;    

    #stop Outlook

    Stop-Process -Name Outlook;

    #wait for 5 second until Teams and Outlook closed

    Start-Sleep -Seconds 5

    #clear teams cache

    Remove-Item -Path $HOME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\* -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction Continue

  • px091's avatar
    px091
    Iron Contributor
    Jun 06, 2022

    This is great information. We have a requirement to clear Teams cache for all users in order for a Microsoft newly released feature to work. 

    Thanks,

  • scottmartin's avatar
    scottmartin
    Copper Contributor
    Apr 30, 2022

    Thanks for the powershell script, a lot more powerfull than my old clearCache.bat 🙂

  • ChrisNHS's avatar
    ChrisNHS
    Copper Contributor
    Aug 03, 2021

    Having issues getting this to work in our environment. I log in with my domain account which has local admin rights, yet this script doesn't delete anything from the user profiles.


    Trying to find a way of getting this to work, we have laptops with small HDD's (120GB) with >70 user profiles and the teams cache is taking up a significant amount of precious space. 

  • Fraserb's avatar
    Fraserb
    Copper Contributor
    Mar 25, 2021

    Hi all,

     

    Has anyone come across the need to remove Teams from users Appdata entirely? For example, using the machine wide installer and PCs that are hotdesks if someone doesn't sign back into that PC for 6 months, Teams is out of date and has vulnerabilities. 

     

    I have been messing about with PowerShell and versioninfo with a less than attribute, but can't get it to work. We only want to remove versions older than x.x.x.x and leave alone versions not affected by vulnerabilities (in turn, this would not affect the currently signed in users Teams folder in appdata).

  • dmitrygancho's avatar
    dmitrygancho
    Copper Contributor
    Sep 02, 2020

    Processes teams.exe and outlook.exe block some files in the cache. If you want to wipe all cache completely, try this

     

    Get-CimInstance -Query "select * from Win32_Process where Name='outlook.exe' or Name='teams.exe'" -ErrorAction Ignore |
    Where-Object -FilterScript {$owner = $_ | Invoke-CimMethod -MethodName GetOwner; $owner.User -eq $env:UserName} |
    Invoke-CimMethod -MethodName Terminate > $null

Remove-Item -Path $HOME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\* -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction Continue

    WARNING: The first command kills outlook and teams processes for the current user.