Forum Discussion

Brent Ellis's avatar
Brent Ellis
Silver Contributor
Nov 18, 2016

Force delete Group Site Collection after Group Deleted?

I don't suppose there is a way to force delete a site collection after the group is deleted?   I created a test group that happened to use the name that I now need to use.  I deleted that group day...
Office 365 Groups
Ángel Alegre García's avatar
Ángel Alegre García
Copper Contributor
Oct 01, 2017

Hi Brent Ellis!

I have a similar issue.

I created an Office 365 group, which automatically created a team site.

I deleted the team site and the group manually, and now I cannot reuse that url in a new team site because Office will add some random numbers at the end. However, if I try to access that URL I get a 403 FORBIDDEN error because the group has been deleted.

Anybody knows how I can get back this url??

Thanks!
Ángel.-

  • Ángel Alegre García's avatar
    Ángel Alegre García
    Copper Contributor
    Oct 01, 2017

    Looks that the site was inaccessible, but it still existed.

     

    Had to use PowerShell to delete it and free the url.

     

    Followed Henk Luggenhorst instructions:

    First unlock the SharePoint site:

    Set-SPOSite -Identity https://<name>/sites/<sitename> -LockState Unlock

     

    Then add your global admin account:

    Set-SPOSite -Identity https://<name>/sites/<sitename> -owner <your global admin account>

     

    Then delete the site.

    It worked great :)

    Thanks a lot!!

    • Pedro Innecco's avatar
      Pedro Innecco
      Brass Contributor
      Oct 25, 2017

      A few steps missing in this explanation

       

      First you need to download and install the SP snap-ins for Powershell

      https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/download/details.aspx?id=35588

       

      Then you can execute the SP commands in PowerShell. The next command must be run on the -admin site of your tenancy:

      Connect-SPOService -url https://<yourtenancy>-admin.sharepoint.com/

       Then finally you can run the commands mentioned before for the deletion of the site:

      Set-SPOSite -Identity https://<yourtenancy>.sharepoint.com/sites/<site> -LockState Unlock
Set-SPOSite -Identity https://<yourtenancy>.sharepoint.com/sites/<site> -owner <admin@domain.com>
Remove-SPOSite -Identity https://<yourtenancy>.sharepoint.com/sites/<site>

       

      Hope this helps!

       

      Here is what I noticed, though: This seems to be a problem when a group is created via Yammer and then pushed from Yammer into O365 as a group. At the time of this writing, O365 does not support creating an O365 groups that is then pushed into Yammer.

      • Hamed Hemmatdar's avatar
        Hamed Hemmatdar
        Copper Contributor
        Jan 25, 2018

        Very simple and effective description to follow. Well done Pedro!

Resources