Delete a site collection (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

 

Applies to: SharePoint Foundation 2010

You might want to delete a site collection if it is no longer needed. For example, if you created a team site to track progress on a specific project, and the project has ended, you might decide to delete the site collection after a certain amount of time has passed.

When you delete a site collection, you are deleting a hierarchy of sites that comprise the collection. When you delete a site collection, you permanently destroy all content and user information, such as the following:

  • Documents and document libraries,

  • Lists and list data, including surveys, discussions, announcements, and events,

  • Site configuration settings,

  • Role and security information that is related to the Web site,

  • Subsites of the top-level Web site, their contents, and user information.

Note

You should back up a site collection before you delete it. For more information about how to back up a site collection, see Plan for backup and recovery (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

Before you delete a site collection, ensure that the following prerequisites are available:

  • A backup copy of the site collection and all of its contents exists.

In this article:

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Delete a site collection by using Central Administration

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Delete a site collection by using Windows PowerShell

Delete a site collection by using Central Administration

After you perform this procedure, the site collection and all of its content and user information will be permanently destroyed.

To delete a site collection by using Central Administration

  1. Verify that you have the following administrative credentials:

    • To delete a site collection, the user account that is performing this procedure must be a member of the Farm Administrators SharePoint group.
  2. On the Central Administration Web site, on the Quick Launch, click Application Management

  3. On the Application Management page, in the Site Collections section, click Delete a site collection.

  4. On the Delete Site Collection page, in the Site Collection drop-down list, click the down arrow, and then click Change Site Collection.

    The Select Site Collection dialog box appears.

  5. In the Web Application drop-down list, click the down arrow, and then click Change Web Application.

    The Select Web Application dialog box appears.

  6. Click the name of the Web application that contains the site collection that you want to delete. Relative URLs of sites in the site collections of the Web application that you have selected appear on the Select Site Collection dialog box.

  7. Click the relative URL of the site collection that you want to delete, and then click OK.

  8. Read the Warning section and verify that the site collection information is correct.

  9. On the Delete Site Collection page, click Delete.

    The site collection that you select is deleted.

Delete a site collection by using Windows PowerShell

After you perform this procedure, the site collection and all of its content and user information will be permanently destroyed.

To delete a site collection by using Windows PowerShell

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.

  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.

  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.

  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.

  5. From the Windows PowerShell Command Prompt window (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command and press ENTER:

    Remove-SPSite -Identity "<URL>" -GradualDelete
    

    Where:

    1. <URL> is the URL of the site collection you want to delete.

    This command removes the specified site collection and all subsites. Gradual deletion reduces the load on the system during the deletion process.

    The previous procedure illustrates a common way of using the Remove-SPSite cmdlet to delete a site collection. You can specify different parameters to configure this command differently. For more information, see Remove-SPSite.

    Note

    We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

See Also

Concepts

Create a site collection (SharePoint Foundation 2010)