Managing SharePoint at scale can quickly become complex, especially in large Microsoft 365 environments. One of the key governance challenges administrators face is dealing with orphaned sites — sites that no longer have valid, active owners responsible for their content and permissions.

Identifying orphaned sites is critical because they introduce compliance risks, unmanaged data exposure, and potential security vulnerabilities. Without clear ownership, access requests go unanswered, external sharing may remain unchecked, and sensitive information could be left without proper oversight.

Orphaned sites are one of the clearest signs of a broader problem: a loss of workspace integrity, which is when Microsoft 365 environments drift out of structural and operational control as organizations scale.

However, spotting orphaned sites isn’t always straightforward. The Microsoft 365 admin centers (SharePoint, Teams, Microsoft 365, and Entra) provide pieces of the puzzle, but no single view brings everything together. To reliably detect orphaned sites, organizations should track a combination of ownership, activity, and directory data. This makes it difficult to reliably determine when a site has truly become orphaned.

Below is a structured approach.

In this article:

• What is an orphaned SharePoint site?
• How to determine if a SharePoint site is orphaned
• How to find orphaned sites in SharePoint Online
• How to manually assign new owners to orphaned sites
• The all-in-one method: automate orphaned site cleanup with Pulse365

What Is an Orphaned SharePoint Site?

An orphaned SharePoint site is a site that no longer has a valid, accountable owner to manage its content, permissions, and lifecycle. While the technical structure of the site still exists, there is no active human custodian responsible for ensuring its proper governance.

Orphaned sites typically occur when:

• A site’s owners leave the organization, and no replacement is assigned.
• A site’s owners move to a new role or go on extended leave, leaving no one actively managing the site.
• Group- or Team-connected sites lose their group owners.
• Owners exist but are inactive (disabled accounts, guest accounts, or service accounts).
• Sites are old and forgotten, even if still technically accessible.

How to Determine If a SharePoint Site Is Orphaned

Because SharePoint sites can be either group-connected or non–group connected, the definition of orphaned varies accordingly:

• Non–Group Connected Sites (Standalone SharePoint sites)
  A site is considered orphaned if the SharePoint Site Owners group is empty or contains only inactive users (deleted or disabled accounts).
• Group-Connected Sites (Microsoft 365 Group or Teams sites)
  A site is considered orphaned if the associated Microsoft 365 Group has no valid active owners. For Teams-connected sites, ownership is based on the Team (Microsoft 365 Group) owners, regardless of whether the SharePoint Owners group contains users.

A site may also be considered effectively orphaned if:

• All listed owners are guests or service accounts (not suitable long-term custodians).
• Owners exist but have not logged in for extended periods (e.g., >12 months).

How to Find Orphaned Sites in SharePoint Online

Method #1: Find Orphaned Sites Using the Admin Centers

The Microsoft 365 admin centers provide several entry points to review site ownership and activity, but the information is spread across different portals. To detect orphaned sites, admins need to approach each site type differently:

Non–Group Connected Sites (Standalone SharePoint sites)

• In the SharePoint Admin Center, go to Active sites, select the desired site, and open the Membership tab.
• Is the 'Site Owners' group empty? If yes, the site is orphaned.
  
• If not, and if you suspect all the owners may be inactive, you need to make a few more validations.
• What to check:
  • Are all listed owners inactive (disabled, deleted, or unlicensed)? You can refer to Microsoft Learn guide on How to detect and investigate inactive user accounts
  • Review the last activity date under site details for inactivity signals.

  

Group-Connected Sites (Microsoft 365 Group sites)

• Where: Microsoft 365 Admin Center → Teams & Groups → Active Teams & Groups
• What to check:
  • Does the Microsoft 365 Group have at least one valid, active owner?
  • Are the owners real users (not guests or service accounts)?
  • If the Group has no valid owners, the connected SharePoint site is orphaned.

  

Teams-Connected Sites

• Where: Teams Admin Center → Teams → Manage Teams
• What to check:
  • Confirm that the linked Team has at least one active Team Owner.
  • If no Team Owners exist, the associated SharePoint site is effectively orphaned, even if permissions show otherwise

  

⚠️ Limitation: While admin centers provide visibility into site ownership management, they do not consolidate orphan detection across all sites in one place. Admins often need to manually cross-reference ownership, directory status, and activity logs, which can be time-consuming at scale.

Method #2: Find Orphaned Sites Using PowerShell

PowerShell provides more flexibility than the admin centers and allows admins to script automated orphan detection across the tenant. By combining SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Groups, and Teams modules, you can check ownership and status at scale.

Identify any type of orphaned site:

# Requires Microsoft.Graph and Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell
Connect-MgGraph -Scopes "Group.Read.All", "User.Read.All"
Connect-SPOService -Url "https://yourtenant-admin.sharepoint.com"

$orphanedSites = @()
$allSites = Get-SPOSite -Limit All

foreach ($site in $allSites) {
    $isOrphaned = $true
    
    # TYPE 1 & 2: Group-Connected or Teams-Connected
    if ($site.GroupId -ne "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000") {
        $owners = Get-MgGroupOwner -GroupId $site.GroupId -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
        foreach ($owner in $owners) {
            $ownerStatus = Get-MgUser -UserId $owner.Id -Property "AccountEnabled"
            if ($ownerStatus.AccountEnabled -eq $true) {
                $isOrphaned = $false
                break
            }
        }
    } 
    # TYPE 3: Non-Group Connected (Classic/Communication)
    else {
        if (-not [string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($site.Owner)) {
            $siteOwner = Get-MgUser -UserId $site.Owner -Property "AccountEnabled" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
            if ($siteOwner.AccountEnabled -eq $true) {
                $isOrphaned = $false
            }
        }
    }

    if ($isOrphaned) {
        $orphanedSites += [PSCustomObject]@{
            SiteTitle = $site.Title
            URL       = $site.Url
            Type      = if ($site.GroupId -ne "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000") { "Group/Teams" } else { "Classic" }
        }
    }
}

$orphanedSites | Export-Csv -Path "./OrphanedSitesReport.csv" -NoTypeInformation
Write-Host "Report generated: OrphanedSitesReport.csv" -ForegroundColor Cyan

⚠️ Limitations: While this script already identifies most orphaned SharePoint sites, it may need to be improved to exclude known special-purpose sites and, when the owner is a group, enumerate group members and check if any are enabled.

How to Manually Assign New Owners to Orphaned Sites

Depending on the type of site you’ve identified as orphaned, the process for reassigning ownership varies. As an Admin, you can perform these actions from the SharePoint Admin Center.

For Non-Group Connected (Classic or Communication Sites)
These sites rely on the Site Collection Administrator role (SharePoint Site Owners) for ownership.

• Go to Active Sites in the SharePoint Admin Center.
• Select the site, click Membership (or "Permissions" in older views).
• Under Site owners, add the new owner's name and save.
• This grants the user Full Control over the site.

For Group-Connected & Teams-Connected Sites
Ownership for these sites is driven by the associated Microsoft 365 Group. Adding a SharePoint Site Owner alone will not grant management rights over the Team or Planner.

• Go to Active Sites in the SharePoint Admin Center.
• Select the site, click Membership
• Under Owners, click Add Owners to assign a new owner.
• The change will sync automatically to the SharePoint site and the Microsoft Team (usually within a few minutes).

The All-in-One Method: Automate Orphaned Site Cleanup with Pulse365

While manual reassignment works for one or two sites, it becomes a massive bottleneck for dozens or hundreds of orphaned workspaces. This is where Pulse365 by BindTuning excels by consolidating detection and remediation into a single dashboard — making Microsoft 365 orphaned workspace management operationally sustainable at any scale.

Instead of running PowerShell scripts and manually cross-referencing CSVs, Pulse365 provides a streamlined workflow:

• Scan your tenant: Pulse365 connects to your tenant and performs a deep audit of all workspaces (SharePoint, Teams, and M365 Groups).
  
• Go to the Orphaned Workspaces Report: Navigate directly to the specialized report that lists every site missing a valid owner (including those where owners are disabled in Entra ID).
  
• Bulk assign owners: This is the "killer feature." You can check the boxes for all orphaned sites, click Assign New Owner, and specify a user or service account.
  

Pulse365 handles the backend complexity — automatically updating the Site Collection Owners for classic sites and the M365 Group Owners for Teams — saving hours of manual admin work and ensuring your governance policy is enforced in seconds.

Maintaining ownership accountability across all workspaces is a core pillar of M365 workspace integrity, and Pulse365 makes it operationally sustainable at any scale.

If manually tracking and cleaning up orphaned sites in SharePoint Online sounds overwhelming, there's a better way. Try Pulse365 today and get an instant scan of your entire Microsoft 365 tenant to automatically find and fix orphaned sites — before they become a compliance risk.
Try Pulse365 free