How to Clear SharePoint Cache

SharePoint is a powerful platform for collaboration and document management. Still, sometimes users encounter issues such as missing profile names, incorrect login names, or missing links and content in web parts or pages. Often, these problems are not due to SharePoint itself, but rather are caused by browser cache or cookies. Clearing your cache can resolve many of these issues quickly.

In this tutorial, I will explain what cache is, why clearing it helps with SharePoint issues, and step-by-step methods for clearing the cache in popular browsers and SharePoint Designer.

What is Cache and Why Does It Affect SharePoint?

Cache is temporary data stored by your browser or application to speed up loading times and improve user experience. This includes images, scripts, and pieces of web pages. Over time, however, cached data can become outdated or corrupted, leading to issues with how SharePoint content is displayed or accessed.

Clearing your cache forces your browser or application to fetch the latest data from SharePoint, often resolving these problems.

Check out SharePoint App Catalog Site

How to Clear Cache in Popular Browsers

1. Google Chrome

1. Click the three-dot menu at the top right of Chrome, then click on Delete browsing data.
2. In the dialog, select All time as the time range.
3. Check Browsing history, Download history, Cookies and other site data, and Cached images and files.
4. Click Delete data.
5. Close all Chrome windows and reopen the browser for changes to take effect.

Here is a screenshot for your reference:

Alternatively, you can quickly open the clear data dialog by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + DEL on your keyboard.

2. Mozilla Firefox

1. Click the menu button (three horizontal lines) at the top right.
2. Choose History > Clear Recent History.
3. Set the Time range to clear to Everything.
4. Click the arrow next to Details and check all options.
5. Click Clear Now.
6. Restart Firefox.

3. Microsoft Edge

1. Click the three-dot menu at the top right.
2. Go to Settings > Privacy, search, and services.
3. Under Clear browsing data, click Choose what to clear.
4. Select All time as the time range.
5. Check Browsing history, Download history, Cookies and other site data, and Cached images and files.
6. Click Clear now.
7. Restart Edge.

Check out Create a Folder in SharePoint using REST API

Using Developer Tools to Clear Cache and Cookies

Modern browsers like Chrome and Firefox offer developer tools that allow you to manage cache and cookies more granularly:

• Press F12 or Ctrl + Shift + I to open Developer Tools.
• Go to the Application (Chrome) or Storage (Firefox) tab.
• Under Cookies, right-click on the SharePoint site and select Clear or Delete.
• You can also clear Local Storage and Session Storage if needed.

This method is useful if you only want to clear the cache for a specific SharePoint site, not your entire browsing history.

Clearing SharePoint Designer Cache

If you use SharePoint Designer, it also maintains its own cache, which can cause issues like not seeing recent changes or getting authentication errors. To clear the SharePoint Designer cache:

1. Close SharePoint Designer.
2. Navigate to the following folders and delete their contents:
   • %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Web Server Extensions\Cache
   • %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebsiteCache
3. Reopen SharePoint Designer.

This helps resolve issues related to site structure, workflows, and list/library changes not appearing as expected.

Best Practices

• Clear cache regularly: Especially if you use SharePoint frequently or manage multiple environments.
• Use private/incognito mode: For troubleshooting, as it doesn’t use the existing cache or cookies.
• Educate users: Many SharePoint issues can be resolved by clearing the cache, so share these steps with your team.

Conclusion

Clearing your browser or application cache is a simple but effective way to resolve many common SharePoint issues. I hope you learn everything about clearing the cache in SharePoint.

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Bijay Kumar

After working for more than 18 years in Microsoft technologies like SharePoint, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI), I thought will share my SharePoint expertise knowledge with the world. Our audiences are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. For my expertise knowledge and SharePoint tutorials, Microsoft has been awarded a Microsoft SharePoint MVP (12 times). I have also worked in companies like HP, TCS, KPIT, etc.