Forum Discussion
Deleted team sites don't stay deleted
I've deleted multiple sites through the new SharePoint admin portal and everything seems to work fine. The sites I've deleted disappear from active sites and go under deleted sites.
However, the next day all the deleted sites are back as active sites. Has anyone else experienced this same problem? Is deleting not yet fully supported or what?
Additional information about the deleted sites:
- Most of them are just test sites users have created in order to test something.
- They're all modern team sites.
- The sites have never been properly used, they don't have any content or activity.
- They are associated with a group, but the groups don't seem to exist anymore (I cannot find any groups with a matching name).
- The sites don't have any owners.
Since I've already deleted these 42 sites twice, I really want to know how I can delete them permanently.
2 Replies
- What you are seeing is not right, the sites deleted should stay in the recycle bin and after some time (30 days) they should automatically deleted. To force a permanent delete you need to use PowerShell...since you are dealing with deleting modern sites, bear in mind that you need to ensure you are deleting the sites, but also the associated groups so you don't leave orphaned objects
I think there is something funny going on with the admin portal. For example there are several sites with group association but the associated groups don't seem to exist.
I cannot figure out how you can get rid of a group without getting rid of the site... Since deleting the group deletes the site and the other way round.
Also there is no way to add owners to sites that don't have any owners previously. I have several sites without any owners, yet I cannot add myself as owners. The "add owners" button doesn't do anything. I can only add owners to sites that
But the good news: the associated groups seem to be missing indeed, so I guess it's save to say that deleting the sites with PowerShell don't leave orphans behind :D
