Delete Item Versions In SharePoint Programmatically

Versioning in SharePoint is an awesome feature that lets users create versions of their documents. However, when left unchecked, especially when the below category of “Document Version History” is selected – an end user will be able to create practically an indefinite number of versions. This is not a recommended best practice and may end up using a huge amount of storage over the years.

While you can always enable versioning settings, and delete the older versions manually, this will be a very cumbersome task, for libraries/lists with more than 1000s of list items.

The script below takes care of that! This script will be helpful in identifying the list of the versions, which needs to be deleted, based on dates of creation, and other input parameters.

Modes and Usage of the Script

This script has three modes,

• Delete item versions in SharePoint using PowerShell – Report Mode
  This gives the report of the item versions that will be deleted but will not delete anything. This is useful for analyzing the files before the decision is made for deletion.

• Delete item versions in SharePoint using PowerShell – Recycle Mode
  This mode will send the identified versions to the Recycle Bin rather than deleting them permanently. The report generated at the end will indicate the item versions moved to the Recycle Bin

• Delete item versions in SharePoint using PowerShell – Permanent Delete Mode
  This mode will delete the identified versions permanently. Once deleted, the versions cannot be retrieved. The report generated at the end will indicate the item versions that have been successfully deleted.

However, it is to be noted that the current version of the document (Current Major Version and current Minor Version) will not be deleted, even if it falls into the category. This script will also let us users know of the storage size saved by means of deletion of the versions.

Input Parameters

The script takes in three input parameters, with sample examples are,

$myWeb	"http://mysharepoint.com/sites/myweb1"	The URL of the web or subsite where the list/library is located
$myList	"Fantastic Library"	The name of the list/library
$myDate	"2014-01-01"	The date beyond each which the versions are to be deleted
$myPath	"E:\Satyajit\VersionHistoryDeleteCheckWithDateFilter.csv"	The location and name of the CSV report

Code for Delete item versions in SharePoint using PowerShell – Report Mode