how to delete a sharepoint site

Office 365, SharePoint, SharePoint 2013

Deleting a SharePoint Subsite in Office 365

Some weeks ago I got this screenshot from an end user:

BP1_Site Contents - Windows Internet Explorer 2013-12-12 22.06.18

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.

BP1_Site Contents - Windows Internet Explorer 2013-12-12 22.06.18_2

Step 4: On the "Settings" page, under "Site Administration" click "Sites and workspaces".

BP1_Site Settings - Windows Internet Explorer 2013-12-12 22.22.07

Step 5: In "Sites and Workspaces" just click the "Delete" icon next to the subsite you want to delete.

BP1_Sites and Workspaces - Windows Internet Explorer 2013-12-12 22.23.57

Step 6: Confirm the action by clicking the "Delete" button at the bottom of the "Delete This Site" page.

BP1_Delete This Site - Windows Internet Explorer 2013-12-12 22.25.28

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.