Delete a board not owned by Administrator

I cannot find a way to do this either. Would love to know if you find anything out from Miro Support!

I believe that once a guest user’s account is no longer valid that boards owned by them will revert back to the company (or possibly team) administrator. They can then be deleted.

You also are always able to move boards till those accounts are no longer valid - I have a “garbage can” project created for this purpose where I move such boards…

Kiron

Thanks for the reply. Our issues is that the boards were created by our active users within our organization, so my assumption is that it would either require: 

• Delete the entire team
• Ask the users to delete their board which would be difficult with the velocity that our employees that are currently need to work at

Hi @Sean Considine,

Am I right that you’d like to clear your account from unused boards?

• What is the real issue you try to solve? Who suffers from this situation?
• How can you determine what boards are unused?

Hi @Claude Keller,

Can you solve your issue by deleting these guest users together with their boards?

Hi @Kiron Bondale,

A nice solution! Do you sometimes go back to the boards in the Garbage Can? Why don’t you just delete them?

@Anton Telitsyn - 

I’m a Team Admin but not the primary company admin so my boss is likely able to delete these orphaned boards but not me - the delete option only shows up for boards where I’m the owner. He’s super busy so rather than constantly bug him to deal with this administrative minutiae I’ve found it simpler just to hide them in the “garbage can”  .

Kiron

@Kiron Bondale Interesting! Do you have a special process for both of you (team and company admins) to clear Miro from such boards?

How do you determine what boards should be removed?

What is the pain point you are solving by removing them?

@Anton Telitsyn -

No special process - mostly me just bugging my boss to delete boards  . I usually clean up mine pretty quickly once I am done with them.

I work for a training company so we’ve got three distinct types of boards:

• Development boards which we use to build and refine the exercises for the classes. Once one of these boards has been built to the point where we can deliver a course with it, I will both save it as a custom template and back it up to an RTB file so that I can restore it to different teams. I leave the original development board there to support further evolution and refactoring of the exercises.These would usually never be deleted.
• Play boards which we use to try something out in Miro or to show someone something. Those tend to be deleted as soon as they are not required anymore but we have a few of those lingering around which I’m not the owner on and hence, can’t delete.
• Class boards which are used for a specific course session which are set up using a custom template or a restored RTB file. We keep those around for a week or two after the course has been held and then delete them.

The main pain point solved by removing them is not having them “clutter” up views like All Boards. I’m also a little OCD so having junk lying around drives me crazy  .

Kiron

I deleted the team members, but I still cannot delete unused boards who were not created by me.

Hi, I had a same challenge, where my new trainees created own boards by play around, but not delete it (even they don't know how to).

Although I am the team admin, I cannot delete the board.

Solution(?):

I partially solved it by removing the members from the list of Active Users.

Process:

Go to "Team profile"

"Active User" under "User & Team Management"

Remove the members who created the unnecessary boards.

Then boards can be deleted together witht the members.

I send an invitation letter to the deleted members.

(Saying "sorry, can you sign up again")

----

Well, it is no smart... though.

I would like to jump in on this discussion as I have the same issue. 

To answer point one the real issue I’m trying to solve is clearing out abandoned or unused boards that make it difficult for users to find the right board / information they are looking for. The entire team suffers because the number of unused boards piles up and the only way to get rid of them is to contact each member individually and ask them to delete. Often this takes several attempts.

To answer point two my team mates often create a board to try to explore and learn how to use miro or to draw up something to discuss. That drawing is then merged with another “MASTER” board but my team mates are too lazy to delete the original board. As an admin, I need the right to clear up the company boards so that it doesn’t become an unmanageable mess.

These are not guest users they are team mates so deleting them is not an option.

@Kirsten Felbert -

Till the ability to delete boards not owned by you becomes available, why not create a “garbage can” project the way I suggested earlier in this discussion thread and just move these boards into it. That way, folks won’t get distracted by them if they navigate using projects rather than the “All boards” filter.

Kiron

@Kiron Bondale I plan to do what you suggested, I just wanted to add to the discussion that it is an issue for my company as well and the ability for an Administrator to delete any board would be very useful. I prefer that to a work around

Hi @Kirsten Felbert!

Thank you for sharing your issues! I’d like to elaborate on one aspect.

If a user creates a private board, it won’t be seen by anyone else. You are speaking about cases when your teammates create useless boards while exploring Miro, so can the problem be caused by wrong sharing options? 

Hi @Anton Telitsyn 

Partly it’s a useless board and could be solved if the user were to make it private to begin with (Getting them to do this is also a challenge and just allowing an admin to delete boards would be easier from a management perspective). However there are instances where they create a board that needs to be shared, they or we work on it but for some reason, that work is abandoned or put on hold. I usually consolidate that type of work to one dedicated board (Because too many boards make it difficult to find what you need) for things that need to be picked up again later or archived. This board is then abandoned and I cannot delete it and have to nag my teammate to do it for months. 

I am in a quite similar situation :

We are 2 admins working on boards, and we cannot delete a board created by the other. How is it possible to do it ? (we don’t want to delete any account).

For information, we are both team admins.

Thanks,

@tlenoir at the moment there is no way you can delete a board that you yourself did not create.

I struggle to understand why, as Company Administrator, I am not able to delete unwanted or unused boards created by active Members? Or at least have an archive function beyond creating a ‘Project Trash’, as some people have suggested above.
 

Generally this issue is generated by new users coming onto the platform, creating ‘My First Board’ or similar and not understanding the set-up options to allow others to delete/administer their boards. The admin of then asking 200+ people to manage/delete seems unnecessary when a simple feature for Company Admin only would suffice.

Hey @Ed Silk! Are you using Enterprise plan in Miro?

It’s very strange that a designated administrator for a group cannot delete boards within the group.

Hello, I am a chemistry professor just starting to use MIRO. I am using the free version to run synchronous problem solving sessions with groups of 44 students.
If I am not using MIRO correctly, please tell me, but I created a board (lets call it board#1) and all my students got access, and we did some problem solving on the board. After class, students enjoyed it and on their own started creating new boards. When I joined MIRO for our next class, board #1 had switched to a ‘’View-Only’’ board, since only 3 boards are allowed in the free version, and students had created more than 3 other boards. So I couldn’t run my practice problems, because neither I nor my 44 students could edit board#1. Despite all the commotion, and jeopardizing that class, I can no longer edit (work with) board#1.
I wish the administrator of the group would not get ‘’kicked out’’ of his board by students. I didn’t find a way to NOT lock out the owner/administrator of the group from his created boards, even if it is a free version.

How can I have access to my board with students creating multiple boards on the free version? What can I do?
1) I understand that I can delete the users who created the extra boards. However that doesn’t solve the problem of having students creating multiple boards 1 minute before class, hence changing the activity board into a view-only board right before class starts.
2) I understand I can just create a new board on the spot, but that new board will not contain all the information prepared ahead of time (for hours).
3) I was using Nureva Span and never had these problems. How is Miro better?

@Yann Brouillette - Getting the Free Plan to work in your scenario would require much discipline from all of your students and would be risky because as you are now finding, students can create a bunch of boards and only the board owner can delete it.

If you were to continue to try to use the Free Plan, you should… you know what? I started to type out steps, but this course of action just gets messy! If you want to know why, private massage me and we’ll have a quick Zoom/phone/Google Meet call.

Instead, I suggest that you look into Miro’s Education Plan to see if you qualify. This plan would give you a free Education Plan team that allows for 100 members (aka, students) and gives you almost all of the paid plan features - you’re really just not getting video chat in the board (as well as some of the plugin options and Day Passes, but you don’t get those in the Free Plan anyway). Here is a breakdown of all Plans and Features Available.

The process of being approved for the Education Plan usually only takes a few days in my experience. Just to to the Education Plan page and scroll down to How to apply for an Education account.

As for the boards your students created, you have a few options:

1. Ask your students to please stop accessing the boards they created while you apply for the Education Plan (at which time you could add them to that new plan team that you’ll create - and if you use the same email address that you used to add them to your Free Plan, they can later move their boards to the new Education Plan team). If they stop accessing the boards except for your Board#1, then Board#1 will become active again.
2. Ask your students to delete all of their boards, letting them know that soon you will add them to your Education Plan where they will be able to create unlimited free boards of their own.

@Robert Johnson Thank you very much for the quick reply! Upon your suggestion, I have applied for the Education Plan team. If it does not work, I will take you on your Zoom offer, if it still stands. Cheers.

@Yann Brouillette - I’m absolutely up for the Zoom call. Best of luck with the Education Plan application!