Powershell Remove Symbolic Link Windows

Question

I am having issues when removing SymbolicLinks which I have created with New-Item:

New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path C:\SPI -Target "C:\Users\Chino\Dropbox (Reserve Membership)\"

I need to modify the link because it has the wrong -Target, which should be:

New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path C:\SPI -Target "C:\Users\Chino\Dropbox (Reserve Membership)\SPI"

How to remove that link and assign a new one? Alternatively, how to update the target path of the existing link?

Pyrogallate

This is not removing the link but rather replacing/updating it. Have you tried the -Force parameter? – Nary

Correct, I do not know how to remove the link- The second item is just showing what I needed it to be. – Pyrogallate

It's absolutely absurd that Remove-Item on a symbolic directory link attempts to recursively delete the original folder. – Durstin

Answer 1

Calling Delete() on the corresponding DirectoryInfo object should do the trick:

(Get-Item C:\SPI).Delete()
New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path C:\SPI -Target "C:\Users\Chino\Dropbox (Reserve Membership)\SPI"

Monicamonie

(Get-Item C:\SPI).Delete() still works as expected: Removing the SymbolicLink and leaving the target folder intact. (Tested PS6 win10) – Salena

Thx! It also works in older versions like Power Shell 4. – Attending

Just don't use get-childitem or dir instead and delete all the files inside the folder! – Imprest

Answer 2

If you want to change the target path of the existing symbolic link C:\SPI from "C:\Users\Chino\Dropbox (Reserve Membership)\" to "C:\Users\Chino\Dropbox (Reserve Membership)\SPI\" you do not need to delete the link beforehand. Simply including the -Force parameter to overwrite the link works for me in PowerShell 5.1 on Windows 10 Pro v1603:

New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path C:\SPI -Target "C:\Users\Chino\Dropbox (Reserve Membership)\SPI" -Force

Nary

Answer 3

No way to update the symbolic link as far as I know. Gotta use CMD to remove symbolic link and you could then re-create it using your powershell script. You would do it like this in powershell.

cmd /c "rmdir C:\SPI"

Signalman

Answer 4

"del" or "remove-item" works in powershell 7.

Imprest