Site Collection error “We're still working on it and it might take 24 hours.”

[C Edwards]

Hi All,

We are using SharePoint Online (Office 365). Yesterday afternoon I deleted the root site collection (https://OurCompany.Sharepoint.com) and recreated it using the publishing portal template. A day later it still has not finished creating the site collection. It has a message saying: “We're still working on it and it might take 24 hours.” This is the first time this has happened to me. It normally takes a few minutes and not a day to create a site collection. Please view the attached image to view the screenshot.

I hope you can help

Colin

[#2]

Well, you should not have deleted the root site collection to avoid side effects like this one. I recommend you to open a support ticket and ask for a root site restore

[#3]

That's a very stupid reply.

If Microsoft did not want you to delete the root Site Collection they would have either stopped you from deleting it (unable to select and then delete it) or they would have given a warning message. I have deleted many root Site Collections in the past and not had this issue. There is nowhere on the internet saying you should not or can not delete the root Site Collection.

[#4]

Is as stupid as your answer to my comment and also the fact you have deleted the root site collection of many SPO tenants...it's also very stupid delete the root site collection to re-create using a publishing template when you can achieve the same in the former root site collection just enabling the publishing infrastructure features at the Site Collection and site level...and finally it seems you are not very aware of all the out of the box features you have in SharePoint what is also quite stupid....good luck with your issue

[#5]

Like most companies we wanted a fresh new root site collection with no data. When we created the new root site collection it showed the publishing portal template as an available template. The issue is you cannot use the publishing portal template as the root site collection template. Microsoft should clearly state you cannot use the publishing portal template. even better remove it when creating a root site collection.

We now are back up and running with no help from your very, very unhelpful replies. 

[#6]

Glad you were able to solve the issue by yourself...AFAIK, the root site collection in any SPO tenant has no data so not sure what you mean by "a fresh new root site collection"...the site collection has not any kind of data...if you mean the template applied by Microsoft does not what you need, this is a different story. Being said that, I would like to know how you would advice your customer or your company to solve issues related to deleting root site collection in a SPO tenancy bearing in mind that Microsoft trends to release stuff to that root site collection such as the SPO landing page from where each user can see the list of sites he has been frequently using, create new sites or just news...have not tried myself to see what happens if I delete the root site in regards of the Home page because most companies are agree to create fresh site collections under /sites path

And last but not least, I recommend you to be more polite and less rude when someone tries to comment on a problem you can have when dealing with Office 365. This is a free community to get help, share experiences and problems and where respect is an important element...so if a comment does not help, simply say: I does not help.

[#7]

Juan Carlos, the root site doesn't have data but has settings which can be corrupt or messed up like it was in my case.

[#8]

Hi, I'm in the same situation.
One of our team members had this issue and also was trying to create a Publishing portal.

Since that, I tried to clean out my test tenant and start off clean. So deleted my root site and I'm trying to recreate a normal Team site.

I agree, if you are not allowed to have a root site as a publishing portal why give the option?
The team site im trying to recreate also now give's me "We're still working on it and it might take 24 hours." Started about 14hours ago...

Found a different thread where you can use some PowerShell to delete from Recycle bin or something like that...Might try that if i get a gap.

[#9]

Very stupid answer indeed.
I did the same because Microsoft allows me to do it. When starting a new Office 365 subscription, microsoft creates a sharepoint for you, online. The collation of the database is Greek in my case, because it sees that this account has been created from Greece. There is no way to change this collation. You have to delete the root site and recreate it with english collation. And that's why Microsoft allows to delete the root site. When you don't know what are you talking about, you better don't criticize others.

[#10]

I am on the same side... Can you provide the link of this Powershell snippet?

[#11]

See this to learn something
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/bb8e165b-df47-457c-af87-a02754b4c982/spo-root-site...

[#12]

https://www.anupams.net/publishing-site-sharepoint-online-root/

Have not tried this yet. Was going to test before i post.

With recreating a team site i now get the following after 24hours.

[#13]

Logged a call. 

Answer from support guy regarding Publishing site:

As we discussed here is a link to a forum discussion detailing the issue with using a Publishing template for the creation of a Sharepoint root site: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/ie/en-US/077b9df1-2c03-4d32-9d9d-960f7fddff77/unable-to-...

[#14]

Not true. I have installed multiple SharePoint intranets (classic). Every single time I start by deleting the root site collection and use publishing template to recreate it. Go on and have a look. You will not see that many third party Intranets with a team site template.

Now I would like to know why this problem happens. I have encountered this exactly two times. The first time this problem happened it took a week until a new publishing site was provisioned. I did create a support ticket but I doubt that did the trick.