Mass Deleting Items in Sitecore

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When deleting a Sitecore item with many descendants, I get nervous if the operation times out. How much actually got deleted? Was the deletion successful? Instead of continuously re-trying to delete the item, I wrote up a simple PowerShell script that will inform you line by line what items are getting deleted successfully. Printed out below is that script. Simply replace the pathway to the item to match the pathway of the item (and its descendants) you would like to delete. If you would like to permanently remove an item and not send it to the recycle bin, add the “-Permanently” flag to the Remove-Item command. For more information on deleting items in Sitecore, refer to the Sitecore documentation found here. Cheers!

$folderItem = Get-Item -Path 'master:<insert path of item here>'

Get-ChildItem -Path $folderItem.FullPath |
    ForEach-Object {   
            Write-Host "Deleting: " $_.Name
            $_ | Remove-Item -Recurse
        }                

Write-Host "Done"