This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: New blog articles in Microsoft Tech Community.
I was tasked to delete more than 300k items loaded as part of testing from a very large SharePoint list, I used the script from the blog post https://vladilen.com/office-365/spo/fastest-way-to-delete-all-items-in-a-large-list/ describing the difference of speed using batches, scriptblock and without batches. The conclusion was batches and scriptblock were equally fast and faster than without the use of batches.
Get-PnPListItem -List $list -Fields "ID" -PageSize 100 -ScriptBlock { Param($items) $items | Sort-Object -Property Id -Descending | ForEach-Object{ $_.DeleteObject() } }
Unfortunately the script kept producing errors like "The collection has not been initialised" , "A task has been canceled" or "The operation has timed out" at irregular intervals and had to manually restart the script to resume deletion of remaining items.
$action = Read-Host "Enter the action you want to perform, e.g. Add or Delete"
$siteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/Team1"
$listName = "TestDemo"
$ErrorActionPreference="Stop"
Connect-PnPOnline –Url $siteUrl -interactive
$Stoploop = $false
[int]$Retrycount = "0"
write-host $("Start time " + (Get-Date))
do {
try {
if($action -eq "Add")
{
$lst = Get-PnPList -Identity $listName
if($lst.ItemCount -lt 300000)
{
$startInc = $lst.ItemCount
while($lst.ItemCount -lt 300000)
{
$batch = New-PnPBatch
#perform in increment of 1000 until 300k is reached
if($startInc+1000 -gt 300000)
{
$endNu = 300000
}
else
{
$endNu = $startInc+1000
}
for($i=$startInc;$i -lt ($endNu);$i++)
{
Add-PnPListItem -List $listName -Values @{"Title"="Test $i"} -Batch $batch
}
Invoke-PnPBatch -Batch $batch
$lst = Get-PnPList -Identity $listName
}
}
}
if($action -eq "Delete")
{
$listItems= Get-PnPListItem -List $listName -Fields "ID" -PageSize 1000
$itemIds = $lisItems | Foreach {$_.Id}
$itemCount = $listItems.Count
while($itemCount -gt 0)
{
$batch = New-PnPBatch
#delete in batches of 1000, if itemcount is less than 1000 , all will be deleted
if($itemCount -lt 1000)
{
$noDeletions = 0
}
else
{
$noDeletions = $itemCount -1000
}
for($i=$itemCount-1;$i -ge $noDeletions;$i--)
{
Remove-PnPListItem -List $listName -Identity $listItems[$i].Id -Batch $batch
}
Invoke-PnPBatch -Batch $batch
$itemCount = $itemCount-1000
}
}
Write-Host "Job completed"
$Stoploop = $true
}
catch {
if ($Retrycount -gt 3){
Write-Host "Could not send Information after 3 retrys."
$Stoploop = $true
}
else {
Write-Host "Could not send Information retrying in 30 seconds..."
Start-Sleep -Seconds 30
Connect-PnPOnline –Url $siteUrl -interactive
$Retrycount = $Retrycount + 1
}
}
}
While ($Stoploop -eq $false)
write-host $("End time " + (Get-Date))
The script took up to 4 hours to add 300k items. The script resumed despite an error happening.
The script took 7.5 hours to delete 300k items with a couple of retries.
