Bulk Delete SharePoint Sites and Subsites

Every way to remove many SharePoint Online sites at once, and the catch in each:

Method	Deletes	Where it goes	The catch
SharePoint admin centre, Active sites	Site collections, including group-connected sites	Deleted sites, 93 days	No subsites; hub sites must be unregistered first; restore is one site at a time
`Remove-SPOSite` in a loop	Site collections	Deleted sites, 93 days	One URL per call, and a script to write and test
`Remove-PnPTenantSite`	Site collections	Deleted sites, unless `-SkipRecycleBin`	One switch away from a permanent delete
Site information > Delete site	One subsite	The site collection's recycle bin	One at a time, from inside each subsite
`Remove-PnPWeb`	One subsite	Nowhere: permanent	No recycle bin, no undo

So the admin centre handles a list of site collections well, PowerShell handles a long list, and subsites are where the native tools run out. The sections below cover each route, then how ShareMaster deletes site collections and subsites from one screen.

Before you delete: four things that stop or change a delete

Hub sites. A hub must be unregistered as a hub before it can be deleted. Sites merely associated with a hub delete normally.
The root site. Microsoft advises against deleting it, because every site becomes inaccessible until it is restored or replaced. Replace it instead.
Compliance policies. A retention policy or eDiscovery hold can block the delete with "A compliance policy is currently blocking this site deletion". Microsoft's troubleshooting article covers clearing it.
Group-connected sites. Deleting one from the admin centre deletes the Microsoft 365 group and everything attached: the Outlook mailbox and calendar and any Teams channels. The site is kept for 93 days, but the group's other resources for only 30.

Deciding which sites to remove is a separate job. If you are still building the list, identifying inactive SharePoint sites and finding sites without an owner cover that, and the site lifecycle guide covers sign-off and archive-versus-delete. This page assumes the list is agreed.

Delete site collections in the SharePoint admin centre

Microsoft documents the steps in Delete a site. You need the SharePoint Administrator role or higher.

Open Sites > Active sites in the SharePoint admin centre.
Select a site from your agreed list. Microsoft's documented steps work on one site at a time, so on a long list this step repeats for every site.
Select Delete and confirm.

Three more limits matter for a big clean-up. Active sites lists the top-level site of each site collection, so subsites never appear on it. OneDrive sites and Teams channel sites are not listed there either. And on the Deleted sites page, the Restore button only shows when a single site is selected, so undoing a bulk delete is a one-by-one job.

Deleted sites stop counting toward your organisation's total storage once they are in the recycle bin, though the storage figure can take up to 48 hours to catch up. To reuse a deleted site's URL you have to delete it permanently from Deleted sites, which works for every site except group-connected ones; those need Remove-SPODeletedSite in PowerShell.

Bulk delete site collections with PowerShell

Remove-SPOSite sends one site collection to the recycle bin per call. Feed it a CSV with a Url column and it works through the lot:

Connect-SPOService -Url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com
Import-Csv .\sites-to-delete.csv | ForEach-Object {
    Remove-SPOSite -Identity $_.Url -Confirm:$false
}

The cmdlet does not delete anything permanently. A removed site can be brought back with Restore-SPODeletedSite, and purged early with Remove-SPODeletedSite. Microsoft notes that you must be a SharePoint administrator and a site collection administrator to run it.

PnP PowerShell's Remove-PnPTenantSite does the same job and also recycles by default. Add -SkipRecycleBin and the site is gone for good, so keep that switch out of anything you paste from a forum.

Watch the subsite cmdlet. PnP's documentation for Remove-PnPWeb states that the subsite is permanently deleted without going to the recycle bin. A loop of Remove-PnPWeb over fifty subsites is fifty deletions nobody can undo.

Delete SharePoint subsites in bulk

Subsites are where the native route gets slow. There is no subsite list in the admin centre and no bulk command in the browser. Each one is deleted from inside itself: open the subsite, go to Settings > Site information, and select Delete site at the bottom of the panel. A deleted subsite goes to the site collection's recycle bin, where a site collection administrator can restore it.

SharePoint also refuses to delete a subsite that still has subsites of its own (or certain apps), with an error saying sites containing subsites cannot be deleted. In a deep tree that means working from the bottom up, one level at a time. If every subsite under a site collection is going, deleting the site collection itself is faster, since it takes all of its subsites with it.

Bulk delete SharePoint sites with ShareMaster

Bulk Delete Sites (current release)

In ShareMaster, open Optimize Storage and choose Bulk Delete Sites. After you choose the source tenant, it loads every site collection into one table with its name, URL and description. Redirect sites, the My Site host and sites locked as read-only or no access are left off the list. Tick the sites (or use the header box to tick them all), select Delete Sites, and confirm.

Each site goes to the tenant's Deleted sites, so it can be restored from the admin centre for 93 days. When SharePoint refuses a site because it belongs to a Microsoft 365 group, ShareMaster deletes the group through Microsoft Graph instead, which removes the site with it. The confirmation says so before anything runs. The tool needs the SharePoint Administrator and Group Administrator roles, and Space Master is included in the Recycle Master and Clone Master plans and the 14-day trial. It works on site collections only; it does not list subsites.

Delete sites & subsites (V2 beta)

The ShareMaster V2 beta puts site collections and subsites in the same table. Under Optimise Storage Tools, the Delete sites & subsites tile lists every site collection, largest first, and expands into its subsites. Subsite sizes are calculated when you ask for them and cached for the next visit.

Move to recycle bin sends site collections to Deleted sites and subsites to their site's recycle bin, both recoverable for about 93 days.
Delete permanently removes and purges site collections behind two separate confirmations. Subsites are always recycled; there is no permanent delete for a subsite.
A subsite that still contains subsites is not deleted on a guess. The run lists the blocked ones and asks whether to recycle each together with its subsites, deepest first.
A group-connected site is not deleted by the beta. It is reported back with the instruction to remove the Microsoft 365 group instead, which removes the site too.
Past site deletions records every run on the device for 90 days, with the exact URLs affected.

Listing the tenant and deleting site collections needs the SharePoint Administrator role. Deleting a subsite needs site collection administrator rights on its parent.

After a bulk delete: what to check

A bulk delete is not finished when the progress bar is. Run through this before you tell anyone the clean-up is done.

Check	Why
Every URL on your list is on the Deleted sites page	A hub, a compliance hold or a group-connected site can fail while the rest succeed, and a long run makes one failure easy to miss
Nothing is on Deleted sites that was not on your list	Catches a mis-ticked row while it is still restorable
The storage figure has dropped	Allow up to 48 hours before treating an unchanged figure as a problem
Groups and Teams owners were told	A group-connected site took its mailbox, calendar and Teams channels with it, and the group is only recoverable for 30 days
Any URL you want to reuse has been purged	A site's URL is only free again after a permanent delete, and can take up to 24 hours after that

Keep the list of deleted URLs with the date and who approved it. If someone asks for a site back in month two, that record and the 93-day window are what you have.

If what you want is to keep a site's content but stop paying full price to store it, deleting is the wrong tool; see archiving a site with Microsoft 365 Archive.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long can a deleted SharePoint site be restored?

93 days, from the Deleted sites page of the SharePoint admin centre, one site at a time. For a group-connected site, the group's other resources are kept for only 30 days.

Can I bulk delete subsites in SharePoint Online?

Not from the admin centre, which only lists site collections. Natively you delete each subsite from its Site information panel. A script can loop over them, but Remove-PnPWeb deletes permanently.

Does deleting a SharePoint site delete the Microsoft 365 group and Team?

From the admin centre, yes: the group, its mailbox and calendar, and any Teams channels go with it.

Do deleted sites still count towards SharePoint storage?

No. Microsoft states that deleted sites in the recycle bin do not count toward total storage. Allow up to 48 hours for the figure to update.

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How to Bulk Delete SharePoint Sites and Subsites