Comments on: Error “This item cannot be deleted because it is still referenced by other pages”

By: Morna

Morna — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:44:42 +0000

Worked great for me…. thank you so very much.

By: Flavia

Flavia — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:38:44 +0000

Thank you very much Andy! It works perfectly, we have spent quite an hour trying to deleted the .master file!

thanks!

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:24:34 +0000

Hmm. I wasn’t aware that something *could* reference an older version of a file in SharePoint. I know that was possible in some other systems (“Generations” in Open Text Livelink, for example). I’ve not seen any URLs that specify a version, either.

After SP1 I’ve never had this problem again; maybe it’s been fixed.

Either way, there is something screwy – I should be able to delete, or not; folders shouldn’t come into it!

By: Marco

Marco — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:36:24 +0000

Hey there,

The proposed solution is actually a workaround. What probably is going on is versioning settings on the masterpage library prohibiting you from deleting the file. So the reference sharepoint is talking about, could be the older versions of the file you are trying to delete. Disabling the Versioning settings on the masterpage library, hence deleting all but the current versions of the file, gives you the opportunity to delete the master template file……
Just dragging the master file into a subfolder could break up versioning for the library.I did not test this though…..

Greetz Marco

By: Jonas

Jonas — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:58:36 +0000

Haha, it worked!

Nice =)

By: Etienne

Etienne — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:35:33 +0000

Nice one! It works great

By: harry

harry — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:09:53 +0000

Thanks, I moved all the unwanted MasterPages to a folder and then successfully deleted it.

By: Paul Baker

Paul Baker — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:50:45 +0000

Excellent – thanks ever so much for posting!

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:28:03 +0000

Thanks for posting this. I was having a hard time figuring this one out, but your solution worked!

By: soren

soren — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:03:21 +0000

Brilliant – just what needed

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:17:55 +0000

Hmm. I don’t know then… I’d check that a) it really isn’t referenced by other pages, and b) it’s checked in. If both those are true, I’m afraid I don’t have any other ideas – though if you do get it sorted, let me know how!

Oh, and you can use the site content and structure pages to find out what files reference a page, though sometimes it will report slightly spurious results – such as master pages, or CSS files.

By: MrEs

MrEs — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:42:09 +0000

When i go to move the file it still says “This item cannot be deleted because it is still referenced by other pages”