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Delete All Document Versions in SharePoint Document Library using PowerShell

Salaudeen Rajack 2 Comments , ,

Requirement: Delete all old document versions in a SharePoint site collection to free up some disk space occupied by document versions. Because simply disabling versioning does not delete old versions which are already created until the next update happens on the document! So, If you want to release the space occupied by previous versions, you’ll have to remove them manually.

How to delete document versions in SharePoint?

To Delete all previous versions of a document in SharePoint, follow these steps:

  • Navigate to your SharePoint Library, click the ellipse (…) and then click on Version History
  • From the version history page, click on “Delete all versions” link, confirm if prompted!
    powershell to delete all document versions in sharepoint

PowerShell to Delete all Document Versions in SharePoint:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
 
#Configuration Parameters
$WebURL = "http://portal.crescent.com.com/projects/"
$ListName = "Documents"

#Get the Web, List objects
$Web= Get-SPWeb $WebURL
$List= $web.Lists[$ListName]

#Get all Items from the List
$ListItems = $List.Items
Write-host "Total Items Found in the List:"$List.ItemCount
$Counter =0

#Iterate through each item
foreach ($ListItem  in $ListItems)
{
    #Display Progress bar
    $Counter=$Counter+1    
     Write-Progress -Activity "Cleaning up versions" -Status "Processing Item:$($ListItem['Name']) $($counter) of $($List.ItemCount)" -PercentComplete $($Counter/$List.ItemCount*100)
     
    #If the File has versions, clean it up
    if ($ListItem.Versions.Count -gt 1)
    { 
        Write-host "Cleaning versions for: " $ListItem["Name"]
        $ListItem.file.Versions.DeleteAll()
    }
}

SharePoint: PowerShell to Delete All Versions for the entire site collection

How about deleting document versions for all document libraries in a site collection? Here is the PowerShell script to delete all document versions in a site collection:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
#Get the Site Collection
$site = Get-SPSite "http://sharepoint.crescent.com/sites/operations"

#Loop through all sites in the site collection
foreach($web in $site.AllWebs)
{
  #Iterate through all Lists
  foreach($List in $Web.Lists)
  { 
      #Get only document libraries & Skip Hidden 
      if( ($List.BaseType -eq "DocumentLibrary") -and ($List.EnableVersioning) -and ($List.Hidden -eq $false) -and($List.IsApplicationList -eq $false) ) 
      {   
          #loop through each item
          foreach ($item in $list.Items)
          {
             if($item.File.Versions.Count -gt 0)
             {
                # delete all versions
                Write-Host "Deleting $($item.File.Versions.Count) Version(s) on: $($web.URL)$($item.URL)"
                $item.file.Versions.DeleteAll()
             }
          }
      }
   }
 }
 
$site.Dispose()
Write-Host "Script execution Completed!"

This PowerShell script will delete old versions in SharePoint document libraries for the entire site collection.

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Salaudeen Rajack

Information Technology Professional with Two decades of SharePoint Experience.

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