Error messages when you delete or rename large folders or sites in Windows SharePoint Services

You may experience one or more of the following symptoms when you try to work with a folder, with a subsite, or with a site in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services:

• When you delete a folder, you receive an error message that is similar to the following:
  The method is not allowed on this folder
• When you delete a subsite, you receive an error message that is similar to the following:
  Cannot delete the folder SubsiteName
• When you delete a site, you may receive an error message that is similar to the following:
  There is no Web named /Sites/SitePrefix
• When you rename a folder, you receive an error message that is similar to the following:
  The method is not allowed on this folder
• When you rename a subsite, you receive an error message that is similar to the following:
  The method is not allowed on this folder

This problem occurs if the size of the folder, of the subsite, or of the site that you want to rename or delete is larger than the maximum limit that is hard-coded in Windows SharePoint Services.

This problem was first fixed in a hotfix that is now contained in a service pack. If you installed the latest Windows SharePoint Services service pack, you do not have to install the hotfix.

Service pack information

This problem is corrected in Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack 2.

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Windows SharePoint Services. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: To resolve this problem, install the hotfix that is described in the following article: After you install this hotifx, you can delete a site or folder of any size.

To work around this problem, delete items in the folder or in the site until the contents of the folder or of the site are less than the size limit. Then, delete or rename the folder or the site that you want.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.This problem was first corrected in Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack 2.

Windows SharePoint Services users cannot delete a folder, a document library, a site, or a site collection if either of the following conditions is true:

• The folder, the document library, the site, or the site collection contains over 40,000 subfolders and documents.
• The size of the folder, the document library, the site, or the site collection is larger than (but not equal to) 2 gigabytes (GB).

Windows SharePoint Services users cannot rename a folder, document library, site, or site collection if either of the following conditions is true:

• The folder, the document library, the site, or the site collection contains over 10,000 subfolders and documents.
• The size of the folder, the document library, the site, or the site collection is larger than (but not equal to) 500 megabytes (MB).

The calculation of the maximum number of objects that a folder, a document library, a site, or a site collection can contain includes the root folder, the subfolders, the documents that are contained in the root folder, and the documents that are contained in the subfolders.

For example, a document library that contains 9,993 documents exceeds the maximum limit of 10,000 items. The number of items that is calculated for the document library is actually 10,001 because the number of items includes the number of documents (9993), the number of files in the Forms folder (6), the forms folder (1), and the root folder of the document library (1).