Forum Discussion
Deleting a Team from within Teams client UI seems to leave the associated SharePoint group site
- Jan 09, 2018
Further investigation shows for our E2 tenant, when you delete a Team via the Teams App, the O365 Group gets deleted, but the corresponding SharePoint site is given a LockState of "No Access", so even if you have permission to the site, it refuses to display in the browser. To see all these sites on your tenant, use the following PowerShell:
get-SPOSite | Select URL, LockState | Where lockstate -eq 'NoAccess'
To unlock the site, so you can browse it again, use this:
set-SPOSite -identity <Site URL> -lockstate "unlock"
And if you want to then delete it:
Remove-SPOSite -identity <Site URL>
Hope that helps
To complete, it exists a delay for the deletion go up like Clifford said. I observe it too. I think this delay is due to the sync process between AAD and Teams.
So, I think the delay max to see the deletion is over 15 mn.
Further investigation shows for our E2 tenant, when you delete a Team via the Teams App, the O365 Group gets deleted, but the corresponding SharePoint site is given a LockState of "No Access", so even if you have permission to the site, it refuses to display in the browser. To see all these sites on your tenant, use the following PowerShell:
get-SPOSite | Select URL, LockState | Where lockstate -eq 'NoAccess'
To unlock the site, so you can browse it again, use this:
set-SPOSite -identity <Site URL> -lockstate "unlock"
And if you want to then delete it:
Remove-SPOSite -identity <Site URL>
Hope that helps
- Betty StolwykMar 08, 2018Brass Contributor
Ellya Gold - very nice instructions! I had not previously worked with powershell so it took awhile for me to get back to this, I had a bit of a learning curve just to get started.
In case anyone else is just getting started with powershell with SharePoint online (O365), here are my beginner tips:
- You have to first install SharePoint Online Management Shell (required to use powershell to interact with SP Online) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35588
- You must be an O365 global administrator
- You must open powershell on your PC as an administrator
- Then you must connect to your SP site before executing any commands:
- Connect-SPOService -Url https://domain.sharepoint.com
Sample commands:
Get-SPSite : output is a columnar table listing of all your SP sites. Default columns are URL, owner and Storage Quota
Get-SPSite | Get-Member : output is a list of all the SP-Site properties. Reference these names in explicit Select statement.
Get-SPSite | Select field1, field2, etc : will display just those column values in columnar table format
Get-SPSite | Select field1, field2, etc | Format-Table -Autosize : will set column widths to longest value in that column. Otherwise, the default column widths may truncated some values.
Get-SPSite | Select field1, field2, etc. | Where field2 -eq 'xxxxx' | Format-Table -Autosize : limit output based on Where criteria
Get-SPSite | Select field1, field2, etc. | Where field2 -eq 'xxxxx' | sort field1 | Format-Table -Autosize : sort by specified column
Get-SPSite | Select field1, field2, etc. | Where field2 -eq 'xxxxx' | sort field1 | Format-List : the output values are displayed in a vertical list instead of a table. Each line is field-title : field-value
Use Start-Transcript to copy all input/output during your powershell session to a file.
Start-Transcript -Path c:\temp\ps.txt -Append
....
Stop-Transcript
A couple of intro articles I found helpful:
http://www.itprotoday.com/management-mobility/powershell-objects-and-output
https://www.petri.com/powershell-101-sharepoint-friends
Complete TechNet documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/powershell-scripting?view=powershell-6
Thanks again for putting me on a powershell adventure!
- Marie-Hélène DUFAUJan 10, 2018Brass Contributor
Thanks for your answer.
Indeed, with your powershell instruction, I see my team site is locked and not removed.
What a disappointment to always have to open a support ticket. :-(
- Alessandro VitaMar 07, 2018Copper ContributorHello There. I know this is a technical post but as user i would like to know if someone knows any way to delete the team but keep the sharepoint site (so the opposite situation we are talking here) . this is usually related to the situation in which I completed a project and i don't want my people (and me neither) to see the team inside their list but, of course, i would like to keep all the documentation related to the project without having the need to copy it into another sharepoint location. Thank you very much.
- Betty StolwykMar 08, 2018Brass Contributor
Alessandro - I do not know how to do that directly, but could you do something like make the Team private and remove all the other members so that they do not see any references to it anywhere? I think you will want to stay a member so that you can have access to the behind the scenes SharePoint team site.
There is also a HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled parameter to the https://technet.microsoft.com/library/mt238274(v=exchg.160).aspxpowershell command that specifies whether the Office 365 Group appears in the global address list (GAL) and other address lists in your organization. Replace "Marketing Department" with your team name. I've never done this but it looks like it would be relevant for you.
Set-UnifiedGroup -Identity "Marketing Department" -HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled $true
There may be some other creative workarounds if what you want to do is not possible. Hopefully this could work for you or will give you other ideas to try.