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Force Delete an Item in Portal for ArcGIS

Jay_Gregory

I'm having problems deleting an item in Portal for ArcGIS. It is delete protected so I can't delete using the UI. I am unable to change the delete protection because the edit button is also disabled. I used ArcGIS Online Assistant and tried to change the delete protection from there but the change from true to false wouldn't actually take. It just kept reverting back. I tried to find the xml or json file in the item ID folder on the Portal server itself, but I couldn't find the delete protection attribute. I'm hesitant to just outright delete the item ID folder itself because I don't know if the item ID is registered anywhere else (a user's item list for instance). Could anyone instruct me on a thorough way to force delete an item from Portal for ArcGIS?

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brettangel

I am not aware of a safe way to force a delete of an item in Portal.

Are you the item owner? It sounds like you may not own the item and would need admin rights to change the delete settings.

Jay_Gregory

I am the item owner. I had changed the owner from another user to myself so I could attempt to use ArcGIS Online Assistant to force change the deleteProtection JSON (which didn't work).

brettangel

Bummer. I thought that might be too easy. I'm just taking guesses here, but can you delete it using ArcGIS Server Manger?

Jay_Gregory

Yeah, it's not in server manager either. It's just a rogue item in my Portal that doesn't point to anything and I don't know how to get rid of....

PaulDavidson1

Jay: Check out the ArcREST interface on GitHub. Lot of admin tasks can be scripted via it.

StevenGraf1

I just had this same issue. To solve it I added a hosting server. It allowed me to delete the items after that.

SimonJackson

I also getting this. Unfederated, did a fresh install of ArcGIS Data Store, and removed the services via manager.

Federated and added the GIS Server as a hosting server, but that leaves me with a bunch of stray items for the services that no longer exist in the GIS Server/ArcGIS Data Store.

Was assuming performing a reindex on portal via portaladmin would fix things up, but no luck.

Any other suggestions?

ChelseaRozek

I'm also dealing with stray items in Portal. Nothing shows up in Server Manager to delete, I have a hosting server set up, there isn't delete protection on these items, and whenever I try to delete it says "Unable to delete item." I'm hoping there's a workaround aside from reinstalling things.

ChelseaRozek

Update: ESRI support helped me clean up these items. We copied their item ids, turned off the Portal for ArcGIS service, then went into {install drive}:\ArcGIS\arcgisportal\content\items and deleted the folders with those ids. When we turned the Portal for ArcGIS service back on and went into My Content, the items were gone

Tech Article: Problem: Unable to delete orphaned items in Portal for ArcGIS

AdamChavez1

Using the ArcGIS Online Assist tool:https://ago-assistant.esri.com/

Log into the Portal/account that owns the items that are phantoms.

Next, click on the item ID, preferably on a new window

Next, it should take you to the item you couldn't access before to delete through normal delete procedure.

You may have to repeat 5 to 10 times as the phantoms often have duplicates.

In my case, once the phantoms were all deleted, it let me successfully delete the user account that "OWNED ITEMS" previously.

GangWang

Strange. I followed the same way, but after restarting the portal windows service. I still can see the item from portal under my content although i can't open it. Any ideas why? By the way, portal version is 10.6.1.

ChelseaRozek

Not sure why it didn't work for you. I'd suggest opening a support ticket with ESRI. If you learn of anything new to help fix the issue, please share with us!

DrewCover

Hello all,

Similar problem with my portal. After re-federation, I have an orphaned dataset, which is delete protected. Online Assist (cool tool btw) cannot help me, the json url is linked to an old webadaptor name and details page will not display, and it will not save changes when editing the JSON file directly in Online Assist.

Also tried the esri workaround. Stopped portal thru my windows server 'Services', deleted the file in the Portal content directory, restarted, annnnd the stupid file is still staring up at me in the online Content. But now it doesn't give a delete protection error, it just thinks forever when any request is made to the layer.

Not the worst problem to have with Portal, but it vex's me greatly, my Portal must be clean and perfect!

Thank you for any suggestions

SimonLynch

Hi, I have had success with a method to remove 'orphaned items' from Portal.

My Infrastructure: Portal 10.6.1 with Federated AGS.

See: Delete Item—ArcGIS REST API: Users, groups, and content | ArcGIS for Developers . As noted in the Help this procedure only works at 10.6.1 and applies to Portal or AGO. My example was with our Portal.

1. Format the URL to perform the Post function in the browser. This was a little tricky but i got it to work. So what i did was start with the convention used to perform a (similar simpler) Post call such as 'Root Post call' (Root—ArcGIS REST API: Users, groups, and content | ArcGIS for Developers ). Once you get that one working move onto the required 'Delete Item' Post request (link above).

2. Source the 'Item ID' of the feature you want to 'delete' from your Portal (the alphanumeric code number of the item in Portal).

3. Login as an Admin (Site Admin) when prompted.

4. I checked the tick box 'Force delete' when prompted.

5. Vwella (Fingers crossed)!

Hope this helps.

DrewCover

Nice angle, but didn't work for my 10.6 Portal/Server. The url and physical path no longer exist. Anybody think i could re-Generate the feature from rest services, then get it happily deleted?

Error snip below:

ZacharyHart

I've been having similar problems. What I've learned is that removing the service from (a federated) server does not remove it from portal. You must remove it from both locations. Not the easiest workflow but oh well.

The exact error I get in Portal is:

Unable to reach the server where the service is. Consider using calling deleteItem with options = { 'force' : true } if the server won't be available anymore.

I found i was able to delete the items using the REST API as found in this thread here. So you're not really having to format the syntax, you're working with the Portal's rest interface.

For example, if you navigate to:

https://portalname/portal/sharing/rest/content/users/<username>/ you can see all the content and their IDs. you can then click on the ID title and then simply use the 'Delete Item' interface with the 'Force Deletion' option checked on.

This works in a more interactive way IMO although not being able to delete via Portal is clunky at best.

On a side note: this interface still isn't letting me delete orphaned items. I need to connect with my IT provider to get access to the location of the portal content directory to try to do this manually (this is an azure deployment so config and storage locations are not a simple file explorer procedure).

Let us know if that helps.

DrewCover

Sorry previous reply was for online assisstant. I tried the REST API method Simon, I think I have my urls correct, error snip below: The webadaptor is named 'Portal', The old webadaptor the item references is 'PortalWA'

DrewCover

Ill go through all these threads and retry Zachary. Thanks for the help, I will update

DrewCover

Success! But in a round about way.

So I hooked up with my REST API. I was able to navigate to the folder and orphan item, then try the deleteitems command with my orphan ID in the box. Its takes me to a blank page in the API with only one 'rest API' link that takes me to the esri documentation, dead end. But very nice to access content this way.

Next, I went back to my Portal Content page where the orphan Item was located, clicked the checkbox, then the 'change owner' option. Moved the owner to a different portal user, then was successful deleting the item through the REST API under that user name. (maybe it would've worked through Portal Content also)

Clean Portal!

RoberthSanchez

First check if the item is a hosted layer or a item which is hosted with ArcGIS Data Store, if is a hosted item then you need to put your federated server as hosting server and then try to delete the item, one important thing when you federate a server and try to remove a item from arcgis server manager is that it should be removed from portal too, if that doest not happen then you have a problem with your federate process, check that the dns used in your web adaptor config and the federation config is correct.

Jay_Gregory

I have also had a problem deleting an item from Portal after upgrading (in this case, 10.4.1 -> 10.6.1). When I hit the delete button, a toast pops up that just gives a general error. I found out that if I make any edit to the Portal item, such as changing the name of item, or tags, etc., and then save the change, I can then delete the item.

ZacharyHart

@Roberth Sanchez

None of the items I am trying to delete are hosted in feature layers. I cannot remove any orphaned items Portal even with the site administrator in the portal content interface and using force delete.

However, you are the first person to suggest that removing items from Server will remove them from Portal. Esri Technical Services told me that the process is to remove them from both locations in a federated environment.

Further: Federation was accomplished using the Cloud Builder.

ZacharyHart

Interesting behavior...hmm...

My problem is that these items don't exist in the Portal site...they only appear on the 'back-end' when navigating through the portal content interface. In there, deleting the items simply doesn't work.

RoberthSanchez

They say that because is a regular problem, but in my case i check that with a wrong configuration with the federated server got that result (not removed in both sides), and with a correct configuration when i remove layers from arcgis server manager then are automatically removed from portal, even if the user logged in arcgis server manager is not the user of portal that upload or share the layer, what i don't know if that change in other versions i'm using ArcGIS 10.5.

Regards.

ZacharyHart

They say that because is a regular problem,

Oh man...I'd like to believe that is not true...but I can't rule that out.

Can you tell me a bit more about the exact DNS configuration to investigate? Even if this does work (the automatically deleting), I kind of doubt I'm going to be able to successfully delete these orphaned items.

ClintonBallandis1

Hi Drew,

I've got a similar issue that you we're experiencing where I've orphaned Portal Items that point to and old webadaptor address. I can't delete them as them as the item details never loads as it is looking for a URL that no longer exists. If I use the rest to try and delete I get the message Item does not exist or is inaccessible. Can you let me know the work flow you used to remove these items?

DrewCover

Hi Clinton,

I went back to my Portal Content page where the orphan Item was located, clicked its select checkbox, then used the 'change owner' option. I moved the item owner to a different portal username, (which I think forces an update to WA url the new owner is under) then was successful deleting the item through the REST API under that user name. (maybe the delete would've worked through Portal Content also)

Clean Portal! Yaaaay! Hopefully works for you

JonathanQuinn

If you have orphaned items, deleting files on disk outside of going through the Sharing API won't remove them from the index, which is why they continue to be returned via searches and within the Portal site. Deleting an item through the Sharing API will remove the item from the index.

You could try to reindex after deleting them, but you run a chance of a discrepancy between the database counts and the index counts.

KyleGonterwitz

I just had a problem "arcgis portal failed to determine if item can be deleted" where the problem was related to a bad manual copy/paste error in the Data Source URL, making it invalid. While the Map Image Layer data source URL was invalid, Portal could not figure out if the item was able to be deleted, so it could not delete the item from Portal. This is a 10.6.1 portal/server federated environment.

To delete the item from portal which I knew to be invalid rather than doing these steps https://support.esri.com/en/technical-article/000016345

I deleted the invalid URL leaving the data source URL blank, then I was able to delete the item from portal.

ImtiazSyed

import arcgis from arcgis.gis import GIS gis = GIS("<A class="" href="https://community.esri.com/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A%2F%2Fportalname%2Farcgis" style="color: #287433; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; text-decoration: none; padding: 0px calc(12px + 0.35ex) 0px 0px;" target="_blank">https://portalname/arcgis</A>", "username", "password") #get the list of orphaned items delete_orphaned_items = gis.content.search(query="owner: ownername AND title:*title*",item_type='Feature *', max_items=100) delete_orphaned_items #filter the items  filtered_items = [item for item in delete_orphaned_items if 'title' in item.title] sorted(filtered_items, key=lambda x:x.title) #replace dry_run with force. dry_run checks if the item can be safely deleted for item in filtered_items: try: item.delete(dry_run=True) except TypeError: print(f'{item.title} not deleted') except RuntimeError: print(f'{item.title} not deleted')

Delete an item in Portal for ArcGIS using arcgis.gis module: https://esri.github.io/arcgis-python-api/apidoc/html/arcgis.gis.toc.html#item

https://community.esri.com/people/syed_imtiaz/blog/2019/07/15/delete-orphaned-items-from-portal-for-arcgis-using-python-script

rhys-kdrm

If this helps anyone, you can delete an item via this URL:

https://[your server]/[your portal name]/sharing/rest/content/users/[your username] - This will show you the content you own, then you can click on the item, then delete it. I had to do this for content that was not showing up in Portal for ArcGIS. I knew it was there and went looking for it and found it via the URL above.

Imtiaz Syed‌ - Nice script, thanks for sharing.

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