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

[Deleted]

Hi SharePoint Online 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]

All subsites belonging to that parent site will be deleted.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-or-delete-a-site-collection-3a3d7ab9-5d21-41f1-b4bd-...

[#3]

Thanks for the quick Reply!  However, correct me if I am wrong, but that link gives specifics around what happens if you delete a site collection (the top level of SharePoint Online).  I do not want to delete a site collection, I want to delete the next level down (a sub site to the site collection).  If I delete that level, will I loose that level's children sub sites?...meaning all that I would have left over is just the site collection.

Site Collection Site   (LEVEL 1)

    -> Site                  (LEVEL 2) 

          -> Sub Site     (LEVEL 3) 

          -> Sub Site     (LEVEL 3) 

          -> Sub Site     (LEVEL 3) 

[#4]

Yes,
You will delete all the subsites under the subsite you delete.

[#5]

That is correct.

[#6]

One follow on question.  Understanding that children subsites are DELETED when their Parent sites are DELETED...is there a way to move a children subsite to a different Parent site before the currrent Parent site is deleted? 

[#7]

---

@Deleted wrote:

That is correct.

---

One follow on question.  Understanding that children subsites are DELETED when their Parent sites are DELETED...is there a way to move a children subsite to a different Parent site before the currrent Parent site is deleted? 

[#8]

I use a tool called Sharegate which has been very helpful in these kind of situations.

https://en.share-gate.com/

[#9]

My advice would be to think about creating each site as a separate site collection. Then, use navigation to connect the sites, not an explicit physical hierarchy. This is the most flexible modeL, especially for governance decisions that are scoped to the site collection.

[#10]

Agree with @Susan Hanley as it's in line with what we're seeing from Microsoft. Groups are separate site collections, pull them together via navigation vs hierarchy as she noted. 

[#11]

Thank you so much for the advice @Susan Hanley! 

My IT department recently provisioned a single SharePoint Online site for my R&D group.  All I received is 1 single site collection (with the ability to build out pages, subsites, etc. underneath).  How can I split what I have into multiple site collections without going back to my IT department to have them set up other SharePoint instances for me????

My project managers are starting to use Groups / Teams; and with each comes with their own dedicated mini SharePoint site collection.  I would love some way to somehow connect my SharePoint Online site collection(s) and their Teams SharePoint project sites so that we could search content cross the different site collections.  Any pointers you could share on that front would also be a HUGE help!

Thank you in advance!!!!

Doug

[#12 · Accepted solution]

There is nothing "mini" about the site collections Groups get! From a feature perspective, they are the same as the site collections provisioned by IT - but they get a modern SharePoint team site. If your teams are able to provision their own Groups, then it is possible that what your IT department has provisioned for you might be a classic "publishing" site, which is oriented towards communication rather than collaboration (think small number of authors and large number of readers). If your goal in creating sub-sites is to create a site for each of your teams to collaborate, then the best "future proof" approach is to configure these sites the way your PMs are doing - as Office 365 Groups (which then allows the teams to use Microsoft Teams). You can "connect" your individual PM sites in a variety of ways. Depending on how many teams you manage, you might find the quickest "no code" way is to create a hyperlink to the team sites on a page in your "parent" site. But you need to think about what outcomes you are going for as well. If the goal is to be more aware of what is happening in these projects, then you have two additional good options "out of the box." (You can do all these things - they are not mutually exclusive.) First, assuming that you Follow these sites, SharePoint home provides a great way to see the most recent activity in these sites from a single "front door." Second, if you create an expectation that your PMs will post major accomplishments as news pages on their team sites, SharePoint home will also show you a "roll up" of the news posts from the sites you are following - both online and in the mobile app. This second approach requires establishing some conventions and norms for your teams - which is always a good idea. (I have written several blog posts about this. Here is the most recent: http://www.networkworld.com/article/3179768/cloud-computing/10-tips-to-get-started-with-microsoft-te...) All of this being said, it's really hard to give specific guidance without knowing exactly what you are trying to accomplish. Hopefully, this will help!

[#13]

Great reply @Susan Hanley!! And, you wrote an outstanding blog (the link you posted) that outlined tips for getting started with Microsoft Teams...well done.

The goal / objective for us provisioning a new SharePoint Online site enable my Global Snacks R&D department at my company (PepsiCo) to:

1. Equip my many project teams with an content management solution for them to use on their projects to effectively store, pass, share, read project documentation.  Yes, I am starting to realize that Microsoft Teams may be the better route for this now that it is GA.  NOTE: despite the size of our organization, we don't have a viable option to support our project's documentation storage and flexibility....resulting in our project teams defaulting to store project-critical documentation on their laptops and email versions to teammembers as required.  Definitly not effective, efficient, or productive.
2. To give Global Snacks R&D a "one-stop-shop" for all employees to be able to execute google-like searches to see 1) inflight project documents, 2) archived project content, 3) strategy documents, 4) any other goverance documents, etc.

We have the 1 SharePoint Online site and going forward my project PMs will be creating their individual Team's sites.  How can I configure our SharePoint Online site to be able to search across all of our project's team sites given they are their own siloed sharepoint subsites (connected to their teams)????

I like your idea of establishing hyperlinks to project team sites (Teams) from our SharePoint Online site; however the 2 negatives I see with that approach include:

1. Someone who is searching for documents stored on a project team's sharepoint site who is not part of the 999 max people given access to the Team's sharepoint will not be able to retrieve the files
2. When executing a search in the SharePoint online site, it will not pull back documentation from Teams sharepoints because they are purely hyperlinks to other site collections....is there a way for me to configure my search easily (out of the box) so that search is able to not only search the SharePoint Online site structure (site collection...down through the subsites) but other site structures out there?

Thanks again,

Doug

[#14]

The enterprise search center in SPO is intended to allow to search across all your SPO deployment what should include Teams (SharePoint sites linked to Teams)