SharePoint Online: What Happens to Sub Sites if You Delete the Parent Site?

[Deleted]

Hi SharePoint Experts,

I am starting to build out a fresh SharePoint Online site for my group, and am still going back and forth on what the optimal design is to optimize the navigation and user experience of my environment.  I am not a techie...I am part of the business that is trying to get this done :-).

I have the standard top level "SharePoint site collection," and underneath that I have a Site, and under the Site I have 3 Sub sites. 

My question is what happens to the lower level sub sites if I delete their parent site (in-between the site collection and 3 sub sites)...see below?  I am considering making a mega menu by creating a hierarchical dropdown from the site collection to the 3 sub sites WITHOUT the need for an added navigation step in-between.

Site Collection

    -> Site

          -> Sub Site

          -> Sub Site

          -> Sub Site

Thank you in advance!!!

Doug Doerhoff

(ddoerhoff@gmail.com)

[#2]

SharePoint won't allow you to remove a Site with subsites inside. It will throw this message:

"There was a problem deleting Web site "/site". Sites that have subsites or certain apps can't be deleted. Please try again after deleting all subsites and removing the apps."

To achieve that mega-menu, you should use some custom code.

[#3]

Hi Douglas,

SharePoint will prevent you from deleting a site if there are subsites underneath. You'll get the following error when you try to:

There was a problem deleting Web site "[server relative url]". Sites that have subsites or certain apps can't be deleted. Please try again after deleting all subsites and removing the apps.

Hope this helps!