How To Bulk Delete Document Library With Powershell

Question

Hey SharePoint Fam,

I have a document library that I need to just totally remove that has 300k documents. Of course I am not able to delete one by one and was wondering if there is a script or tool I could use to simply delete all files or just delete the entire library all together.

I've tried following script but get runtime exception errors

Blockquote

 Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell -ea SilentlyContinue

    ##  SP URL
    Write-Host "Provide SharePoint URL:" -ForegroundColor Yellow
    $webURL = Read-Host
    $web = Get-SPweb "http://domain/subsite"

    ## LIST NAME
    Write-Host "Enter name of the list:" -ForegroundColor Yellow
    $listName = Read-Host
    $list = $web.lists["libraryname"]

    ## SET QUERY
    $query = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPQuery
    $query.ViewAttributes = "Scope='Recursive'"
    $query.RowLimit = 1000
    $query.ViewFields = "<FieldRef Name='ID'/>"
    $query.ViewFieldsOnly = $true


    ## EXECUTE
    do
    {
        $listItems = $list.GetItems($query)
        $query.ListItemCollectionPosition = $listItems.ListItemCollectionPosition

        foreach ($item in $listItems)
        {
            Write-Host "Deleting Item - $($item.Id)" -ForegroundColor Yellow
            $list.GetItemById($item.Id).delete()
        }
    }
    while ($null -eq $query.ListItemCollectionPosition)

    Write-Host "Script finished." -ForegroundColor Green

Answer 1

You could delete the library in the library setting.

And as I test, this powershell script works well.

$WebURL="http://sp"  
$LibraryName="docLib"  
   
#Get Web and List objects  
$web = Get-SPWeb -site $WebURL  
$list = $web[0].Lists[$LibraryName]  
   
#delete sharepoint document library using powershell  
$list.Delete()  

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Answer 2

I've tried the Delete This Document Library option but it does not work. I get a error: The attempted operation is prohibited because it exceeds the list view threshold enforced by the administrator.

The document library currently has around 500k documents loaded. Would I need to temporarily adjust my threshold to 500k?

Thanks