Recycle bin report
Reclaimable recycle-bin storage
Deleted content still counts against your storage quota until it ages out, and on a site that has had a big clear-out that can be a surprising amount. This shows what is sitting in a site's first and second stage recycle bins, who deleted it and when, and how much purging would give back.
What it tells you
- How much storage the recycle bins are holding, split across the first and second stage.
- What is actually in there: item counts, names, and where each item came from.
- Who deleted each item and when, which is usually the question behind "where did that library go".
- What would be recoverable, before it expires on its own.
How it runs
- Sign in and choose a site. Clicking the tile asks which account to use and how to connect, signs you in if you are not already, and drops you straight on the site list. No feature page asks you to connect a second time.
- It reads both stages. First stage is what a site owner can restore. Second stage is the site collection administrator's bin, and is usually where the surprising numbers are.
- Save the workbook. Summary for the totals, Items for the detail.
- Act separately, if you want to. Browsing, restoring and purging live on the Recycling bin tile. This report changes nothing.
How it works
It first checks which stages your account can read, then reads the first stage bin, then the second. Each bin is read for the whole site collection, page by page, with any repeated items removed. If SharePoint refuses the site collection read outright, it falls back to the bin of the site you picked, which covers that site only.
Each item's size is the size SharePoint records for it in the bin, and the stage totals are those sizes added up. A stage your account cannot read is skipped, noted in the on-screen log, and its total shows as zero. Any other error stops the report.
When both bins are empty, no workbook is written. Otherwise the workbook goes into History and then you are asked where to save it. The item list continues onto further sheets past Excel's row limit rather than being cut short.
What you get
An Excel workbook, named like contoso-recycle-bin-report-20260901-142207.xlsx, kept in Report History whether or not you save it. Original location is the column that answers where something came from, which the browser interface makes surprisingly hard to read.
Summary sheet
Counts and storage, per stage, and the total.
Items sheet
Everything in both bins.
| Column | Example |
|---|---|
| Name | Q3 forecast.xlsx |
| Original location | Shared Documents/Finance/2026 |
| Kind | File |
| Deleted by | Dana Reyes |
| Deleted (UTC) | 19/08/2026 11:04 |
| Size (bytes) | 1,468,006 |
| Stage | First-stage (site) |
What you need
- Site collection administrator on the site, to see the second stage bin. Without it you see the first stage only. The on-screen log says the second stage was skipped and why; the workbook shows it as 0 items without a reason.
What it will not do
- It reports one site at a time. For a tenant-wide picture of deleted storage, the Site & subsite storage report carries a recycle bin sheet.
- Purging is permanent and is not done here. It has its own tile and its own confirmation.
- Items expire on Microsoft's schedule, so a report from last week may list things that have since gone on their own.