With SharePoint User recycle bin, there is no way to ‘Empty’ the recycle bin in a single go. We have this option in Site Collection Recycle Bin. May be this is done deliberately to prevent users from deleting all items by accident! This is definitely a fallback from developers perspective.
I quickly found a way to Empty your recycle bin without going through the pain manually deleting each of the files or selecting the files and clicking on the ‘Delete Items’ button.
- Open your SharePoint Recycle Bin Page by clicking on the Recycle Bin icon on the left navigation bar.
- Simply copy the below JavaScript statement into the address bar and click Enter.
javascript:emptyItems();
Note: Be careful as all of the items will not to sent to Site Collection Recycle Bin. I reckon this a good tip for development phase.
Posted by portaleco on March 17, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Strange the Sharepoint users seem to accept any sillly “feature” of the product.
Posted by SharePoint, SharePoint and stuff : SharePoint Kaffeetasse #51 on April 1, 2008 at 7:44 am
[...] Empty SharePoint User Recycle Bin [...]
Posted by Craig Holt on May 23, 2008 at 12:01 am
Excellent post, thanks very much. We are in the process of going live with our SharePoint server and have found this slightly annoying!
During testing we have deleted some files from a Document library that have totalled 20Gb in size. When they go to the second level recycle bin and we tick them and ask SharePoint to permanently delete these files it takes about 1 hour to remove them. The biggest issue is that whilst this is being done nobody can access SharePoint :>( Do you have any ideas abou tthis one?
Posted by Henry on September 23, 2008 at 4:57 am
Saved me some hours on a box where I don’t have Site Collection rights. How clever to think about the parts instead of the interface! thx.
Posted by Devin Walker on October 14, 2008 at 4:09 am
Wow, thanks! I had 120,000 deleted list items that had to go… this did the trick!
Posted by DG G on March 18, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Cant belive it worked. Wonderful suggestion. Thanks a lot dude.
Posted by Wes on May 21, 2009 at 2:17 am
Never thought of that! Thanks!