Removing Large Document Libraries

Haven't been blogging much as I've been burning the candle at both ends (and sometimes all three ends) trying to get wrapped up for 2004 and ready for 2005 at work (not an easy task). I did have a tip that I came across though that I thought I would share.

If you have a very large document library or list (either one with a lot of folders/documents or one with very large documents) you may find if you try to go and delete the library/list from the settings page that it fails (with a very cryptic message to contact your server administrator). The easy solution is to jump into Explorer view (yes, I hate it as much as you do) and delete files and folders from there, not grabbing too many at once. Basically I found that deleting 30 or 40 folders/files at once to be a good number. Sure, it can take awhile and you can experiment on increasing that number but I suggest you don't try selecting all 1000 files at once and deleting them. If you don't have Explorer View (personally I delete them on all my document library until Microsoft fixes the version bug with them) then just use your Network Places (or a mapped drive under XP) to get to the site and delete from there. For some reason when you delete the entire library from the admin screen, it sometimes chokes so this is a way around it. Your mileage may vary.