Delete orphan Guest User Profile

Question

(In a Marie Kondo mood)

I have a custom guest user profile: Foo.

• There are no assigned users to this profile (makes sense - it is a guest user profile)
• There are no Digital Experiences or Sites that reference this profile
• It can't be deleted via MD API destructiveChanges.xml using this package:

destructiveChanges.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Package xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">
  <types>
    <members>Foo</members>
    <name>Profile</name>
  </types>
</Package>

package.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Package xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">
  <version>52.0</version>
</Package>

Error

cannot delete profile

I have no idea how the org got into this state - the profile exists in PROD and was related to a long-ago public site (2017-ish) that we no longer have in the org.

Profile Foo no longer sparks joy and I want to get rid of it. But how?

UPDATE: Support ticket filed; I'm not sanguine as you can't delete Sites which in turn means you can't delete its guest user profile. Even though I have no site referencing these guest user profiles.

Answer 1

Per Support, there is no solution for this - Guest User Profiles, even ones disconnected from any Site can't be deleted

There is a Known Issue that was fixed in Winter 2020 that could have explained how the Guest User Profile ended up in PROD (and hence subsequent sandboxes).

Basically, someone in the org might have deployed a guest user profile via a Changeset before Winter 2020 but did not deploy the corresponding Site. The MDAPI no longer allows this.