Some weeks ago I got this screenshot from an end user:
OK, I changed his red caption a little bit. The text was more similar to “How THE HELL do I delete this???”
You might be tempted to think that the delete button is just around the corner, but I actually had to send a couple of screenshots to my user in order to teach him how to do it.
Here are the steps:
Step 1: Navigate to the parent site of the subsite you want to delete. On the screenshot above it is called “Projects”.
Step 2: Go to “Site Contents” of the parent site by clicking the link in the left menu.
Step 3: Click “Settings” on the “Site Contents” page.
Step 4: On the “Settings” page, under “Site Administration” click “Sites and workspaces”.
Step 5: In “Sites and Workspaces” just click the “Delete” icon next to the subsite you want to delete.
Step 6: Confirm the action by clicking the “Delete” button at the bottom of the “Delete This Site” page.
The subsite will be sent to the “Recycle Bin”, so you can recover it from there if necessary.
In some cases this seems like too much trouble, e.g. when you want to delete a subsite you created by accident and you just want to get rid of it. But I guess the assumption is that this is not a common use case of subsite deletion. The common scenario would be to delete a site on which you worked for days or months, and in that case maybe it’s not such a bad idea to go through all these steps.
10 Responses
Or, go to the Site Settings page of the subsite and click “Delete this site” under the Site Actions heading.
This setting was not available for us. The grey X in your picture is just missing. We had to choose delete site form site settings.
Thanks for that it has worked. However my subsites are still showing on the sites list? But when they are clicked you get a 404 error. Any idea how to stop them appearing at all? Thanks
I’m playing with Team Sites for my company and created a few to see how it all works. I’ve tried or deleted a few of them…but they still show up on the default page (when I click on “SITES” in OWA)…if I click on them, it says site not found, but they still show up on the page.
Please advise.
Didn’t work for me – I don’t have any place to put a checkmark under the delete column. Very frustrating. Why do I have permission to create, but not delete? I’m the global administrator – doesn’t make sense.
All good and well till step 5 – I don’t have the cross to delete sub-site. AFAIK I have full site administrator privileges as I set up all of our office 365 , SharePoint etc.
Great this worked! Thank you!
I’ve spent hours trying to figure out how to do this. Now, I realize I would have never figured it out. Thanks!
I followed these instructions (thank you so much) … but I do not have a delete icon .. there is the heading for delete, but does not allow me to delete a sub-site that I no longer want (actually created it in the wrong place).
This won’t work if the site you are trying to delete is below the first level of subsites of any site collection