Forum Discussion
Force delete Group Site Collection after Group Deleted?
I'm having this problem. I had a user create a bunch of Office 365 Groups. I deleted them a few days ago but the sharepoint sites won't delete. It complains about retention policy or eDiscovery. I've turned off all retention policies even though I don't think that's the issue. I also made sure there were no eDiscovery cases as well. Still, the sites won't delete even after trying the recommendations here.
I went into one of the sites and found word files in the document library. I deleted them and they ended up in "preservation hold library" which from what I can tell is an eDiscovery hold thing. It won't let me delete them.
Is there some way to see WHAT the sharepoint site thinks the retention policy or eDiscovery case is that is assigned to it?
Could it be that it won't delete the sharepoint site until the 30 days for recovery of the Office 365 group expires?
I just want this stuff gone so I can clean up the mess the users created!
Jason Gould : did you find out if it was happening due to ediscovery retention policies ? And site will delete once retention expires?
poojac19 No. I've been dealing with Microsoft Support, multiple escalations, and they still can't fix the issue. They were only able to delete some sites for me. But sharepoint sites both old and new keep saying they can't be deleted due to a "compliance policy". I've completely disabled all retention policies. Deleted them. Recreated them. Made sure no policies were applied to sharepoint sites. Tried to add certain sites as excluded. I've tried everything.
There are no ediscovery cases in my tenant.
It's honestly beyond annoying at this point.
Jason Gould - I'm in the same boat as you. I have a single site collection where we dump all of our traditional team collaboration sites (as sub-sites) and that Site Collection has a lock on it. I ran through hours and hours of Support and they could never get it fixed. To this day i still can't delete any sub-sites under this one site collection and I'm beyond frustrated that NOT ONE person at Microsoft could resolve this issue. We ran all kinds of scripts to output metadata, i bounced between teams, SharePoint/Compliance and Security. Frustrating to say the least!!
Greg Jones I was having the same frustrating issue but was able to get it resolved by Microsoft support. Here was there explanation:
Hi James, I just got an update from the Engineering team that they were able to remove the hold that they found already. Please check or try again after 24 hours. Let me know how it goes. Thanks. Regards, David Office 365 Next Team SupportNaturally their explanation doesn't help at all but you might try referencing my ticket number and with any luck the'll have some internal notes on how they resolved it on their end. Ticket number 13659489.
Good luck!
Jason Gould Did you get any resolution from Microsoft on this? Currently dealing with the exact same problem and they seem mystified by it :-/
Just went to the same issue. You need to delete the Office 365 groups in two places. If you delete online in the Admin Center->Groups, you still need to go inside Portal Azure and permanent delete the Groups there. Portal Azure ->Azure Active Directory -> Groups -> Deleted Groups -> Send them to SPACE :)
You give a day or two and the sites will be deleted. :)
This whole issue has nothing to do with ediscovery policies.. crazy!
