This site address is available with modification- SharePoint
On Microsoft SharePoint, when you create a new site collection, the site name is reserved on the SharePoint Online database, and the site itself is available under the ‘Active sites’ section in your SharePoint Admin. If you delete this site collection, this site moves from the ‘Active sites’ to the ‘Deleted sites’ section, however, the reserved site name is not cleared up. Hence when you create a site using this same name, the error ‘the site address is available with modification’ is displayed.
This literally means that you cannot utilize that name because the deleted site is still in your recycle bin or The site has not been deleted and is still available under the ‘Active sites’ section.
But let’s say you want to utilize this name without deleting this site to or from recycle bin, then you need global administrator access and some PowerShell scripts, to make this work.
Let’s get our hands ‘dirty’ 😁
Assuming that you use Powershell or SharePoint Management Shell (On windows), This script would make the site name available, when the site has been removed from the ‘Active sites section’, and now residing in the ‘Deleted Sites’ section (You could just delete from recycle bin from the browser).
Tenantname: this is the name of your SharePoint tenant
Sitename: this is the name of the site name that you need to be available
Connect-SPOService -url “https://tenantname-admin.sharepoint.com/sitename" -Credential (Get-credential)
Remove-SPOSite -Identity https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename
Assuming that you use Powershell or SharePoint Management Shell (On windows), This script would make the site name available, when the site still resides in the ‘Active sites’ section. The whole idea is to rename it, using Powershell.
#Set Parameters
$AdminCenterURL=”https://tenantname-admin.sharepoint.com"
$SiteURL = “https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename
$NewSiteURL = “https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename_old"
$NewSiteTitle = “Sitename old”
#Connect to SharePoint Online
Connect-SPOService -Url $AdminCenterURL -Credential (Get-Credential)
#Get all site collections
$Sites = Get-SPOSite -Limit All | Select -ExpandProperty URL
If($Sites -notcontains $NewSiteURL)
{
#Rename SharePoint Online site URL using PowerShell
Start-SPOSiteRename -Identity $SiteURL -NewSiteUrl $NewSiteURL -NewSiteTitle $NewSiteTitle -Confirm:$false
}
Else
{
Write-Host “New Site URL ‘$NewSiteURL’ is not available!” -f Yellow
}
You can now handle this error, anytime it surfaces. I demystified PowerShell here, on one of my blog posts.
Do leave your comments/feedback behind, if this helped you in any way.
