In this tutorial, you will learn about all the options that are available to you when you decide to uninstall a Sitecore package. Sitecore packages are extremely useful for quickly adding bespoke Sitecore functionality to your website. If you look within the Sitecore marketplace, here you can find hundreds of free packages that you can add to your website.
Installing a Sitecore package is easy. installing a Sitecore package, however, is a different story. As of yet, Sitecore does not provide us with an automated way to uninstall a package. if you are struggling to remove a package from your Sitecore instance, this is the tutorial for you 🔥🔥🔥
How To Manually Uninstall A Sitecore Package
If you want to uninstall a package, you will need a copy of the original Zip file that you used to install it. Uninstall this file:
For most packages, you should see an extracted file called packages.zip. un-zip this as well:
If you drill down into the items folder, you should be able to find a collection of files and folders that the package installed into Sitecore during installation:
After you drill down you should see a GUID for each item
Make a note of this GUID value. You will use it to locate the items you need to remove within the Sitecore editor. Log into the editor and in the search bar search using the GUID. The related item should be returned. Delete it ❌
If the package also contains a folder called Files. You will need to repeat the process, however, this time you will need to remove files from your webroot rather than items within Sitecore. For every file that you find within the Files folder, locate the corresponding file in your webroot and detect the item.
TIP: When you uninstall a package, you may need to get a copy of an older file you may have overridden previously. To get access to these files, look within a folder called Temp in your webroot. Here you should see a folder called installation_history. installation_history is the folder Sitecore uses before overriding files, so have a nosey around until you find the things you need.
After deleting everything within the package from the master (and core if required), I usually do a full republish to ensure everything is synced and working as expected. It is good practice to rebuild the link databases. Your package should now be gone 💥
Happy Coding 🤘
