Forum Discussion
Error "The site collection already exists. Please enter a different address." HELP please
i want to create a new site collection with url = /sites/PMO/, but i am getting this error:-
The site collection already exists. Please enter a different address.
Permanently delete the site collection from the recycle bin and continue.
As follow:-
but i checked our recycle bin and it does not have any site + i checked the modern site collection and none of them have this url /sites/pmo/
so not sure why i am getting this error ? and which recycle bin it is refereeing to "Permanently delete the site collection from the recycle bin and continue. "? as our recycle bin is empty, as follow:-
- Do you by chance have an Office 365 Group / Team / Planner Plan with this same name? If so, that could be a reason why you are having this message because you have a SPO site with the same name that it's not displayed in the old admin center. Also check in the new Admin Center if you have a PMO site or it's in the recycle bin in the new SPO Admin Center
jcgonzalezmartin wrote:
Do you by chance have an Office 365 Group / Team / Planner Plan with this same name? If so, that could be a reason why you are having this message because you have a SPO site with the same name that it's not displayed in the old admin center. Also check in the new Admin Center if you have a PMO site or it's in the recycle bin in the new SPO Admin CenterThanks for your reply.
i already checked my modern site sites from the modern center admin interface, and there is not any site collection with this url. also i check the modern admin UI's recycle bin (i attached an image inside my original question). also if i try to navigate to this url /sites/pmo/ i will get page can not be displayed, so this gives an indication that there is not any active site with this url .. is this correct?
also I intentionally tried to create a new site collection with the same url as a site which already exists (/sites/HR/), and i will get this error, without any option to remove it from recycle bin:-
now i remember around 6 months i ago i created a site with this url /sites/pmo/ but i removed it from recycle bin at that time.. so maybe sharepoint/Microsoft is storing this removed site collection for certain period of time behind the scenes ? but in all way the error i originally got, makes me feel that this site collection is already removed, that why i has a checkbox to remove it from recycle bin? what do you think?
second point, how i can check if i have a Planner Plan with this url ?
Hi John,
In normal site collections there are TWO recycle bins for items.
First stage and second stage. It takes 93 days to go through BOTH recycle bins.I am pretty sure that the SharePoint admin center show only the "first stage" bin for site collections.
I arrive at this conclusion because the "DAYS REMAINING" column NEVER shows 93 days - only 29 or lower. Added to the fact that when you delete a site collection a pop up message says "You have 93 days to restore deleted site collections before they're permanently deleted".
So it appears that there is no way to access the "secondary stage" recycle bin from the UI.
My guess is that your site collection has moved into that UI Inaccessible second stage recycle bin.
Consequently, whilst you can't see it anymore, SharePoint can.
Hence you get the ambiguous message that it exists in the "recycle bin". Of course it is then referring to the "Second" bin (which is invisible to you).
Fortunately, you can see ALL the deleted site collections (i.e. Stage one and Stage Two) using this single PowerShell cmdlet:
PS C:/>Get-SPODeletedSite
I bet it is in there!Best regards
