🚀 Streamlining Sitecore Maintenance Post-Upgrade: How PowerShell Helped Us Fix Missing Templates and Flashes Items

Hi Sitecore folks! 👋

Upgrading Sitecore is always an exciting step forward — more features, improved performance, and enhanced stability. But let’s be honest: it’s not always smooth sailing.

We recently upgraded from Sitecore 10.1 to 10.4, and while most things worked seamlessly, we hit a snag that many of you might also face post-upgrade — orphaned or missing templates, especially related to SXA Flash items.

In this blog, I’ll walk you through:

 ✅ What went wrong
 ✅ Why it mattered
 ✅ How we solved it using PowerShell (our superhero 🦸‍♂️)
 ✅ And how you can do it too

Whether you’re maintaining a single Sitecore instance or overseeing 160+ SXA-based websites like we are — this one’s for you.

🧨 The Issue: Missing Templates for Flash Items

After the upgrade, we noticed something odd in our SXA environments. In the Data folder, several “Flashes” items were still visible — but something wasn’t right:

• We couldn’t interact with them.
• Their templates were missing.
• Deletion through the Content Editor? Not possible.

That’s when we turned to the old-school trick of visiting /sitecore/admin/dbbrowser.aspx, where we could manually select and delete these items. But here’s the thing—with 160+ websites across Dev, UAT, and Prod, manual cleanup just wasn’t an option.

😫 Why Manual Fixes Just Don’t Scale

When you’re dealing with tens or hundreds of websites, manual steps become a maintenance nightmare. What if you miss one? What if someone deletes the wrong thing?

We needed:

• 💡 A repeatable, automated process
• ⚡ A fast solution
• 🔄 The ability to run across multiple environments without human error

And that’s where PowerShell stepped in and saved the day.

💻 PowerShell to the Rescue

One of the most powerful tools in the Sitecore ecosystem is PowerShell Extensions (SPE). If you’re not using it yet — trust me, you’re missing out.

We wrote two scripts:

1. ✅ One to identify Flash items with missing templates
2. ❌ Another to delete them safely

🔍 Step 1: Identify Orphaned Flash Items

Here’s a sample PowerShell script that recursively searches for Flash items with missing templates:

# Define the template Name for the Settings item
$dataFolderTemplate = "DataFolder"

# List to hold matching flashes items
$matchingFlashes = @()

# Fast query to get all Settings items under /sitecore/content with the specified template ID
$dataItems = Get-Item -Path master: -Query "fast:/sitecore/content//*[@@templatename='$dataFolderTemplate']"

foreach ($dataItem in $dataItems) {
    
    # Check if the Settings item has a flashes item under it
    $flashPath = "$($dataItem.Paths.FullPath)/Flashes"
    $flashItem = Get-Item -Path $flashPath -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

    # If flashes item exists and matches the target template ID
    if ($flashItem -ne $null) {
        #$flashItem | Set-ItemTemplate -Template $targetTemplateId
        #Publish-Item -Item $flashItem -Target "web" -Recurse
        
        $matchingFlashes += $flashItem
        #$flashItem | Remove-Item
        #Write-Host "  Found flashes: $($flashItem.Paths.FullPath)"
    }
    else{
        Write-Host " Not Found flashes: $($dataItem.Paths.FullPath)"
    }
}

# Output matched flashes items
#$matchingFlashes | Select-Object Name, TemplateName, @{Name="Path";Expression={$_.Paths.FullPath}}
$matchingFlashes | Show-ListView -Property Name, TemplateName, @{Name="Path";Expression={$_.Paths.FullPath}} -Title "Flash under Home"
# Show total count of matching $matchingFlashescts items
Write-Host ""
Write-Host "Total matching flashes items: $($matchingFlashes.Count)" -ForegroundColor Green

📌 This script outputs a clean list of problematic Flash items in your tree — 

great for auditing before deletion.

🧹 Step 2: Clean Up with a Deletion Script

Once verified, we ran the following PowerShell script to safely delete the Flash items:

# Define the template Name for the Settings item
$dataFolderTemplate = "DataFolder"

# List to hold matching flashes items
$matchingFlashes = @()

# Fast query to get all Settings items under /sitecore/content with the specified template ID
$dataItems = Get-Item -Path master: -Query "fast:/sitecore/content//*[@@templatename='$dataFolderTemplate']"

foreach ($dataItem in $dataItems) {
    
    # Check if the Settings item has a flashes item under it
    $flashPath = "$($dataItem.Paths.FullPath)/Flashes"
    $flashItem = Get-Item -Path $flashPath -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

    # If flashes item exists and matches the target template ID
    if ($flashItem -ne $null) {
        #$flashItem | Set-ItemTemplate -Template $targetTemplateId
        #Publish-Item -Item $flashItem -Target "web" -Recurse
        
        $matchingFlashes += $flashItem
        $flashItem | Remove-Item
        #Write-Host "  Found flashes: $($flashItem.Paths.FullPath)"
    }
    else{
        Write-Host " Not Found flashes: $($dataItem.Paths.FullPath)"
    }
}

# Output matched flashes items
#$matchingFlashes | Select-Object Name, TemplateName, @{Name="Path";Expression={$_.Paths.FullPath}}
$matchingFlashes | Show-ListView -Property Name, TemplateName, @{Name="Path";Expression={$_.Paths.FullPath}} -Title "Flash under Home"
# Show total count of matching $matchingFlashescts items
Write-Host ""
Write-Host "Total matching flashes items: $($matchingFlashes.Count)" -ForegroundColor Green

🎯 This script saved us hours of manual work and helped ensure consistency across all environments.

🎯 Bonus: Target Specific Items If Needed

Need to delete a specific item? You can tweak the $sitecoreItemPath in the script:

$sitecoreItemPath = "/sitecore/content/your-specific-item-path"

💡 This flexibility makes it easy to manage exceptions or troubleshoot individual issues without running global deletions.

🧠 Lessons Learned

• Automate early. Don’t wait until the cleanup becomes overwhelming.
• PowerShell is your best friend for large-scale Sitecore environments.
• Always audit before deleting — especially post-upgrade when things can be unpredictable.
• SXA upgrades may leave artifacts, so include this check in your post-upgrade checklist.

🙌 Final Thoughts

If you’re upgrading Sitecore (or planning to), keep PowerShell in your toolkit. It’s not just a scripting language — it’s your automation Swiss Army knife 🔧 for Sitecore maintenance.

These scripts helped us clean up 160+ websites in minutes — not hours or days.

🗣️ Over to You!

Have you faced a similar issue post-upgrade?
 Do you have other cleanup tips or automation tricks?
 Drop your thoughts in the comments — I’d love to learn from your experience!

🔗 Script Reference:
 GitHub — DeleteFlashesItem.ps1

📌 Stay tuned for more Sitecore insights, real-world fixes, and automation guides.

Till then, happy Sitecoring! 💙