Microsoft Purview: Failure deleting a Collection

Question

I am testing Collection structures in Microsoft Purview, this includes using the functionality for adding and deleting Collections. I have deleted all the Assets from a Collection that I would like to remove, it also has no associated Sources. However, I am unable to delete the Collection, and encounter the following message: "Request failed with status code 409 The collection [collection name] is being referenced by other resources and can't be deleted."

There is no additional information provided about which "resources" reference this collection. How can I investigate which other resources reference this Collection in order to remove the references and enable deletion?

Please also note: This Collection has no sub-Collections. I also deleted the Source that had been registered and whose Assets were previously scanned into this Collection. I haven't found a way to use the Governance Portal in order to investigate if Scans somehow continue to exist after a Source is removed and all its Assets are deleted. ("You can delete a collection if it does not have any assets, associated scans, data sources or child collections." from: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/purview/concept-best-practices-collections)

Thank you.

Answer 1

Hello,

It may be better for you to get the details internally, since details of how the fix was implemented were not shared with me.

To the best of my knowledge, a delete operation that I had tried to perform on a Data Source within the Governance Portal interface wasn't completed on the backend (they "found user sent the request to delete this data source", which for some reason still existed). I no longer saw the Data Source in the interface and was unaware it hadn't actually been deleted. However, it still existed and referenced the Collection I was trying to delete.

The solution was that Microsoft staff had to investigate and identify that the Source still existed, and then delete it.

Answer 2

Hi,

I have the same problem today.

Request failed with status code 409 Request ID: ... [collection name] (ul34hz) is being referenced by assets and can't be deleted. Surely no assets are attached to it.

Answer 3

I have the same issue today so it seems it can be reproduced.

Answer 4

Hi
I've contacted with Microsoft support which helped me with this issue.

It turned out collection contained zero-size assets, which were not deleted when I've deleted scan.

To find and delete such objects, I've followed these steps:

1. Open Purview: https://purview.microsoft.com/
2. Once it opens, URL includes tid: https://purview.microsoft.com/home?tid=1234a123-1aef-123a-a123-1d12345678be
3. At the end of the url add parameter: &feature.ext.catalog={"enableToggleEmptyFile":"true"} this option allows to show or hide empty files (zero size files), url after modification will lok like:

https://purview.microsoft.com/home?tid=1234a123-1aef-123a-a123-1d12345678be&feature.ext.catalog={"enableToggleEmptyFile":"true"}

4. In the search text box on te top of the screen put ***** (star) and confirm by enter - it will search for all files
5. Click "View all in Data Catalog" on the right
6. Switch off "Hide zero-size file" option
7. Select collection in the filters to display assets related to the problematic collection
8. delete zero size assets
9. Delete collection

I hope this solution can help if anybody have the same issue.