Delete a large number of documents from a site

Question

Can anyone tell me the quickest way to delete a large number of documents from a site library if you are an administrator for the site? Any powershell commands?

Answer 1

I always end up using "Open in Windows Explorer", as that's quicker for me than trying to script something.

Answer 2

If speed of deletion is critical for you (you have really large amount of data), use batch operations. This post could be helpful for you, you can easily adopt it to the PowerShell Script. Batch operations are more fast, I think few times faster.

Answer 3

Here is a PowerShell script to delete all the files and folders from a document library:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

$web = Get-SPWeb -Identity "http://sp2010srv"
$list = $web.GetList("http://sp2010srv/DocLib")

function DeleteFiles {
    param($folderUrl)
    $folder = $web.GetFolder($folderUrl)
    foreach ($file in $folder.Files) {
        # Delete file by deleting parent SPListItem
        Write-Host("DELETED FILE: " + $file.name)
        $list.Items.DeleteItemById($file.Item.Id)
    }
}

# Delete root files
DeleteFiles($list.RootFolder.Url)

# Delete files in folders
foreach ($folder in $list.Folders) {
    DeleteFiles($folder.Url)
}

# Delete folders
foreach ($folder in $list.Folders) {
    try {
        Write-Host("DELETED FOLDER: " + $folder.name)
        $list.Folders.DeleteItemById($folder.ID)
    }
    catch {
        # Deletion of parent folder already deleted this folder
    }
}

I can't take full credit for this code; it was heavily adapted from Vedran Rasol's answer to this question.