Using the Delete Button and Recycle Bins

The Delete button on the Documents tab sends one or more documents to the Recycle Bin for the document library. The ability in SharePoint 2010 document libraries to check one or more items as being selected allows a user who has contributor permissions or an administrator to easily delete a number of items. Note that the Delete key on the keyboard can also be used.

After the items are sent to the Recycle Bin, a member with full control permissions can restore anyone’s items, or a member with contributor permissions can restore items he has deleted. A member with read permissions won’t have access to the Recycle Bin. An administrator with site collection administrator privileges can access the Site Collection Recycle Bin (otherwise known as the second-level Recycle Bin) that contains items deleted from the End User Recycle Bin, or to see and restore items still in the End User Recycle Bin.

Note that a farm administrator needs to determine the base settings for the Recycle Bin for the site collection in question. A farm administrator can access the Web Application General Settings interface from the Central Administration site to determine the following settings:

• Recycle Bin Status On or Off.

• The amount of time after which to recycle items in the Recycle Bin. The default is 30 days, and the number of days can be changed, or Never can be checked.

• The percentage of live site quota allocated for the second stage deleted items, with 50 percent being the default, or the Second Stage Recycle Bin (otherwise known as the Site Collection Recycle Bin) can be turned off.

This combination of tools has come a long way since SharePoint 2003, where there wasn’t a Recycle Bin at all!