Site Deletion and Recovery

If you no longer want to keep a SharePoint site, you can delete it if you have sufficient permissions. If the site has subsites, you need to delete the subsites before deleting the site that contains them, for example the News and Events subsites in an Atlas Communications Centre. When a site or subsite is deleted all the lists, libraries and content within that site or subsite are deleted too.

There is no pre-requisite to delete a list or library, or items or documents within them. If a library is deleted the library and all its content is deleted. All deleted items are sent to the recycle bin.

In this article:

• Site Deletion
• Site and Content Recovery

Site Deletion

When you delete a site or subsite, all the direct child content will be deleted with it. If the site has subsites, you need to first delete the subsites with their child content.

1. To delete a site and its contents, navigate to it and go to Site settings from the menu
2. Under the “Site Actions” heading click Delete this site:
   
3. This will take you to a warning page which gives details of all the things you will be deleting if you delete the site – click the Delete button if you accept this warning:
   

   

4. If you forgot to delete subsites or certain apps, you will see this error:
   

   

5. To work around that error, make sure you remove all subsites and custom apps from the site.
6. Once you have ensured all blocking content is removed, you can delete the site. This means it is removed and no longer accessible to users. SharePoint Administrators can restore it from the second stage recycle bin, otherwise it will be unrecoverable after 90 days when it is finally purged.

Note: If there are still references to the deleted site in the navigation menus please ensure that you update the menus to avoid sending users to pages that do not exist.

Site and Content Recovery

When you delete a site, it will go to the site collection second stage recycle bin which can be accessed only by Site Collection Administrators. Lists, libraries and content will go to the first stage recycle bin and after around 90 days will be transferred to the second stage recycle bin.

1. To recover deleted items, go to the homepage of the containing Information Centre, then from the cogwheel go to Site settings, and under Site Collection Administration click Recycle bin
2. This is the first stage recycle Lists, libraries and content deleted from the current site will be available here. You can either leave items to be processed by the default rules, restore them or permanently delete them.
3. To restore or delete items, select them in the list using the checkboxes then click Restore Selection or Delete Selection in the menu:
   
4. When nothing is selected, click the Empty Recycle Bin button to delete everything:
   
5. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to see the link to the second stage recycle bin, containing sites, lists and items deleted from the first stage recycle bin: