Forum Discussion

simuuh's avatar
simuuh
Brass Contributor
Mar 19, 2021

Channel folder cannot be deleted

Hi community

There are channel folders they cannot be deleted. the channels have already been deleted in Microsoft Teams.

 

The channels are deletedhere is no delete buttonconnected to an channel ... ?

Tried to delete the folder with "Sharegate"

 

Question:

  1. Why are the folders not deletable?
  2. How can I delete this folders?

Edit: Similar topic, but no solution: Unable to delete a folder "abandoned" after channel deletion - Microsoft Community

Regards, Simon

  • Ruben_Jobse's avatar
    Ruben_Jobse
    Copper Contributor
    I had the same problem.
    I have fix it by making a new channel with the same name as the folder. Than delete the channel. After that it is well posible to delete the folder.
  • Brian_Evans's avatar
    Brian_Evans
    Copper Contributor

    I found a couple of workarounds by accident. Since we can't rename the folders in the Team's SharePoint document library, I deleted all the original channels and created new ones so the new file folders would match the channel names. (Obviously, this works best for brand new Teams) Then, to remove the original file folders, the first and best option I discovered is to select "Manage Access" from the file's actions menu.

        

     

    This allows Team Owners to change a specific file to "Read Only" for Team Members, but also gave the option to "Stop sharing". By selecting this, Team Members will no longer see it in the Document Library on the SharePoint side, which is essentially the same as deleting it.

     

     

    Finally, to hide the old folders for Team Owners, I created a new View called "Active Folders" and added a filter to only show items with a "Modified" date greater than the date that the original folders were created. Then I made that the Default View. But be careful because, not only does the filter applies to all the documents in the folders, but the default view gets applied to the Channel files tabs. (Again, this works best if you haven't actually started using the Teams site yet.) 

     

     

     

  • Jamie_Weller's avatar
    Jamie_Weller
    Copper Contributor
    I did not try the rename solution, but I had a similar situation where a channel had been deleted and the folder was still in Documents. Because of how folders show up in SharePoint Online now as either "In Channels" or "In Site Library" (my trouble was in the In Site Library), creating a new channel with the same name and deleting it didn't work. However, I was able to go to the site library, click "Edit in grid view" and delete the row with the troublesome folder, and that did actually delete it!
    • Wayne_900's avatar
      Wayne_900
      Copper Contributor
      Excellent, worked for us and super easy. We had no delete, rename or move items on the context menu. Opened in grid view, selected the folder and pressed delete. Voila.
  • Lars Roth's avatar
    Lars Roth
    Brass Contributor
    I also had this issue with an orphaned channel folder in SharePoint Online. My solution was to create a channel again with the same name. The new channel was mapped to this existing folder. Then I deleted the channel again and then the folder was "free" and delete in the menu available.
  • I think this is due to the fact the channels are still in soft-delete state and it seems there is not yet a proper solution for this Today
    • simuuh's avatar
      simuuh
      Brass Contributor
      Thanks for the answer.

      so, I have to wait until the channels are deleted completly after 21 days?
      • Francis Laurin's avatar
        Francis Laurin
        Brass Contributor

        For the record (the other thread is locked): the solution was to simply move the folder in a dummy one and then delete the dummy one. However, even moving is not available anymore through the UI. It is still possible to do it in PowerShell (as opposed to direct delete) via Move-PnPFolder cmdlet. This worked for me today.

  • Sukki's avatar
    Sukki
    Copper Contributor

    My solution was by renaming the channels in Teams before deleting it. Then I was able to delete the folders from SharePoint.

Resources