Scenario: You have a large (>5k items) list in SharePoint Online.
You need to delete this list. “Remove-PnPList” fails with a message “The attempted operation is prohibited because it exceeds the list view threshold enforced by the administrator“. Deleting with UI fails too.

Try this:

Get-PnPListItem -List $list -Fields "ID" -PageSize 100 -ScriptBlock { Param($items) $items | Sort-Object -Descending | ForEach-Object{ $_.DeleteObject() } } 

or this:

$batch = New-PnPBatch
1..12000 | Foreach-Object { Remove-PnPListItem -List $list -Identity $_ -Batch $batch }
Invoke-PnPBatch -Batch $batch

for me both methods get same results: ~17 items per second ( ~7 times faster than regular).

PnP.PowerShell batches

With a new PnP.PowerShell we can perform some operations against an SPO list with batches! My measurements:

References:

• Get-PnPListItem PageSize ScriptBlock Examples
• Get-PnPListItem
• Delete all SharePoint list items with PowerShell
• Deleting a Library That Exceeds Threshold