Fastest way to delete thousands of listitems

Question

I have a list with about 500.000 thousand items. I need to delete all list items which created date is after a specific date.

The query would match about 450.000 thousand items. And then delete all of them.

Whats the fastest way to do it?

Answer 1

You can do batch deletes using SPWeb.ProcessBatchData method.

Answer 2

Here Is good code for this:

       protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        SPWeb witryna = SPContext.Current.Web;


        SPList list = witryna.Lists["Szczegoly"];
        StringBuilder sbDelete = BuildBatchDeleteCommand(list);
        witryna.ProcessBatchData(sbDelete.ToString());
    }

    private static StringBuilder BuildBatchDeleteCommand(SPList spList)
    {

        StringBuilder sbDelete = new StringBuilder();

        sbDelete.Append("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?><Batch>");

        string command = "<Method><SetList Scope=\"Request\">" + spList.ID +

        "</SetList><SetVar Name=\"ID\">{0}</SetVar><SetVar Name=\"Cmd\">Delete</SetVar></Method>";


        foreach (SPListItem item in spList.Items)
        {

            sbDelete.Append(string.Format(command, item.ID.ToString()));

        }

        sbDelete.Append("</Batch>");

        return sbDelete;

    }

Answer 3

Another option would be connecting to the list via Access and running a delete query against the list.

Answer 4

You can write a small jQuery-snippet with SPServices, This forum post seems to work, so just change the listname and the CAML Query according to your criteria.