Track content that has not been accessed for a certain period

Question

I want to track down files in a site collection that have not been used or accessed for X years. I found out that you can delete old documents by SharePoint Auditing, but what I want to do is list not only documents, but also lists, libraries and even sub-sites that have not been used/accessed. Is this possible?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

What is pretty easy, is to get the "Modified" date of a site, list or document. But for last access date, I don't know of any way to get this information.

Propably you could use the logging DB (WSS_Logging) of SharePoint:

https://www.codeproject.com/kb/sharepoint/sploggingdatabase.aspx

to run Reporting on that table is supported. Maybe you can find information there.

Edit: You could also have I look here, which talks about the same suggestion I just made:

I cannot think of a PowerShell Script that will get the last access date for a site. Since all usage data is in the RequestUsage view of the WSS_Logging database and query this database is supported, you can create a pivot table with Excel 2010 PowerPivot or use SQL Analysis Service to build the report. Additionally, Varun has blogged about a solution for MOSS 2007, hopefully it could help in SP 2010 scenario. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/varun_malhotra/archive/2010/05/12/moss-2007-get-last-accessed-date-for-a-site.aspx

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/966d6169-4dd3-4da3-9194-105307622474/getting-last-access-date-via-powershell-in-sp2010?forum=sharepointadminprevious

Answer 2

Since we didn't have audit active, I had to go with the last modification date. I did that using a powershell script to go trough everything and save the results on a CSV file. Here is the script:

  function Get-DocInventory([string]$siteUrl) 
{ 
    $site = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite $siteUrl #gets site collection       # looping trough webs       foreach ($web in $site.AllWebs) 
    { 
        # looping trough lists          foreach ($list in $web.Lists) 
        { 
            # removing lists that are hidden, master page/list template/theme/web part galleries e style libraries
            if( $List.Hidden -eq $false -and $list.Title -ne "Style Library" -and $list.Title -ne "Master Page Gallery" -and $list.Title -ne "List Template Gallery" -and $list.Title -ne "Theme Gallery" -and $list.Title -ne "Web Part Gallery")
                {                       
                    # looping trough items
                    foreach ($item in $list.Items) 
                    { 
                    # the info I needed                         $data = @{ 
                            "Site" = $site.Url 
                            "Web" = $web.Url 
                            "List" = $list.Title 
                            "ID" = $item.ID 
                            "URL" = $item.Url 
                            "Title" = $item.Title 
                            "Created" = $item["Created"] 
                            "Modified" = $item["Modified"] 
                                 } 
                        # cria um objeto com as informacoes
                    } 
                }                       
        } 
         $data = @{
            "Site" = $site.Url 
            "Web" = $web.Url 
            "List" = "n/a" 
            "ID" = $web.ID 
            "URL" = $web.Url 
            "Title" = $web.Title 
            "Created" = $web.Created 
            "Modified" = $web.LastItemModifiedDate 
        }
            New-Object PSObject -Property $data | Select "Site", "Web", "List", "ID", "URL", "Title", "Created", "Modified"
            $web.Dispose(); 
    } 
        $site.Dispose()
}
 # command 
Get-DocInventory "http://yoursite" | Export-Csv -NoTypeInformation -Path "c:\results.csv"