PowerShell – Delete field and all references

Sometimes you want to delete a site column from SharePoint and you get the nice message stating “Site columns which are included in content types cannot be deleted. Remove all references to this site column prior to deleting it.”. Really helpful that it states in which ContentTypes the field is used. It gets even worse when the column is also used in lists… You can do this via PowerShell easily:

# Add SharePoint PowerShell Snapin

if ( (Get-PSSnapin -Name Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null ) {
    Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell
}

#—————————————————————————-
# Delete Field
#—————————————————————————-
function DeleteField([string]$siteUrl, [string]$fieldName) {
    Write-Host “Start removing field:” $fieldName -ForegroundColor DarkGreen
    $site = Get-SPSite $siteUrl
    $web = $site.RootWeb

    #Delete field from all content types
    foreach($ct in $web.ContentTypes) {
        $fieldInUse = $ct.FieldLinks | Where {$_.Name -eq $fieldName }
        if($fieldInUse) {
            Write-Host “Remove field from CType:” $ct.Name -ForegroundColor DarkGreen
            $ct.FieldLinks.Delete($fieldName)
            $ct.Update()
        }
    }

    #Delete column from all lists in all sites of a site collection
    $site | Get-SPWeb -Limit all | ForEach-Object {
       #Specify list which contains the column
        $numberOfLists = $_.Lists.Count
        for($i=0; $i -lt $_.Lists.Count ; $i++) {
            $list = $_.Lists[$i]
            #Specify column to be deleted
            if($list.Fields.ContainsFieldWithStaticName($fieldName)) {
                $fieldInList = $list.Fields.GetFieldByInternalName($fieldName)

                if($fieldInList) {
                    Write-Host “Delete column from ” $list.Title ” list on:” $_.URL -ForegroundColor DarkGreen

                 #Allow column to be deleted
                 $fieldInList.AllowDeletion = $true
                 #Delete the column
                 $fieldInList.Delete()
                 #Update the list
                 $list.Update()
                }
            }
        }
    }

    # Remove the field itself
    if($web.Fields.ContainsFieldWithStaticName($fieldName)) {
        Write-Host “Remove field:” $fieldName -ForegroundColor DarkGreen
        $web.Fields.Delete($fieldName)
    }

    $web.Dispose()
    $site.Dispose()
}

#Delete the field below
DeleteField http://sharepoint “MyField”

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