Web Part Page Maintenance

Here is a simple way to get to the web part page maintenance screen.  This can be helpful if a web part customization is causing the page to error out.

 

All you need to do is append:

?contents=1

to the page URL.  For example, if your page URL is http://sharepoint/Pages/Home.aspx, you can enter http://sharepoint/Pages/home.aspx?contents=1

From the maintenance page, you can delete problematic web parts:

 

How to move an Access 2010 Web Database to a Different SharePoint Site

1. Open the Access Web database

2. Save the database to a local file by selecting File -> Save As -> Save Database As -> Save as Local Database

3. Return to the File tab, then click Publish to Access Services on the Info tab

4. Enter the new site URL and site name

5. The web database will be created as a sub-web of the URL specified

6. Remove the local copy of the database

Error Creating PerformancePoint datasource

Scenario

The following error occurs when you attempt to create a new data source using Dashboard Designer 2010:

You do not have sufficient permissions to complete the request

This occurs in the following scenario:

• Site Collection A contains the following webs:
  • Web1 – root site in site collection
  • Web2 – subweb to Web1 (Business Intelligence Center)
• You have delegated design permissions to the BI authors in the BI site (Web2). These users do not have permissions on Web1
• The BI author launches Dashboard Designer from the BI site and attempts to create a data source:

 

• When the BI author selects the data source template, the permissions error is displayed.

 

Cause

In the process of creating the data source, Dashboard Designer requires that the user has at least the following permissions in the root web of the site collection:

 

In my scenario, the BI authors did not need access to the content on the root site, so I simply created a custom permission level on the root with the following permissions:

• Use Remote Interfaces
• Use Client Integration Features
• Open

 

Once the BI author has these priviledges on the root web, they are able to create PerformancePoint data sources in the BI subweb.

NEW indicator in SharePoint lists and Libraries – Number of Days to Show

By default, when new items or documents are adding to SharePoint, SharePoint will display this icon:

The default setting on the web application is to display this icon for 2 days.  If you want to customize this, you can easily do it with our trusty friend PowerShell.

To verify the current setting:

$wa = Get-SPWebAppication -Identity:http://webappurl
$wa.DaysToShowNewIndicator = {SomeInteger}
$wa.Update()

or, to see the setting for all of your web apps:

Get-SPWebApplication | ft DisplayName, Url, DaysToShowNewIndicator

To update the number of days:

$wa = Get-SPWebAppication -Identity:http://webappurl
$wa.DaysToShowNewIndicator = {SomeInteger}
$wa.Update()

If you are still running SharePoint 2007 – you can do this with stsadm.  By the way…time to upgrade!

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287681(v=office.12).aspx

OneNote Web App Error: This notebook cannot be opened for editing.

Symptoms

• When opening OneNote notebooks in the browser, you get an error that “This notebook cannot be opened for editing”

 

• Seems to be user & machine specific, works for some and not others
• Does not matter which WFE you are connected to
• Does not happen on all web applications (in my scenario, it only happened on one web app)
• No errors in the application event log or in the SharePoint logs with standard logging levels

Troubleshooting

As usual, the first step is to turn up diagnostic logging in Central admin.  For this issue, in order to see the errors, I enabled verbose logging on all categories.  Just enabling verbose on Office Web Apps category did not produce the results I needed.

Here are the errors that proved to be useful:

07/30/2013 09:56:46.04        w3wp.exe (0x0214)        0x32BC        SharePoint Foundation        Client File Access        0000        Monitorable        csi server sandbox work throw exception: System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for ‘Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SandboxCommunicator’ threw an exception. —> System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: Access is denied at System.Diagnostics.ProcessManager.OpenProcess(Int32 processId, Int32 access, Boolean throwIfExited) at System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcessHandle(Int32 access, Boolean throwIfExited) at System.Diagnostics.Process.OpenProcessHandle() at System.Diagnostics.Process.get_Handle() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SandboxCommunicator..cctor() — End of inner exception stack trace — at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SandboxCommunicator.UnmarshalStreamFromSandbox() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility.PerformSandboxOperation(SandboxCommunicator communicator, ExecuteCellStorageBinaryRequestParameters paramVals) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility.ExecuteCellStorageBinaryRequest(SPFile spfile, Boolean fileExists, Stream request, Boolean coalesce, Guid& partitionID, String userName, Boolean coauthVersioning, String etagMatching, Boolean fExpectNoFileExists, String contentChangeUnit, String clientFileID, String bypassSchemaID, Int64 nLockType, String lockID, Int64 nTimeout, Boolean createParentFolder, String& etagReturn, Boolean& allRequestSucceeded, Int32& coalesceHRESULT, String& coalesceErrorMessage, Boolean& containHotboxData, Boolean& haveOnlyDemotionChanges, Int32& binaryReqCountQuota)        a5ffcef2-0cd8-4dae-9e96-5ed99e5805da

Watson bucket parameters: Office Web Apps, ULSException14, 52a97675 “office web apps”, 0e00178d “14.0.6029.0”, 1f65804a “microsoft.sharepoint”, 0e0017e5 “14.0.6117.0”, 4f4def78 “wed feb 29 03:27:20 2012”, 000078c2 “000078c2”, 00000014 “00000014”, b4892e93 “typeinitializationexception”, 64366b79 “d6ky”

ttidLogException CErrorException thrown. IError=ICsiError: csierrBlobHeap_BlobNotFound (0x25A)

It was the error that contained the text “BlobNotFound” that led me to the solution.

Solution

Disable the BlobCache on the web application that is having issues.  This setting is in the web.config file for the web application.  Simply set the BlobCache enabled property to false.

<BlobCache location=”D:\BlobCache\14″ path=”\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|jpe|jfif|bmp|dib|tif|tiff|ico|png|wdp|hdp|css|js|asf|avi|flv|m4v|mov|mp3|mp4|mpeg|mpg|rm|rmvb|wma|wmv)$” maxSize=”10″ enabled=”false” />

Make sure this change is made on all of your web front end servers.

People Picker Field on Datasheet View Empty

When working with a task list in datasheet view, the people picker drop-list should contain the users that are in the site’s user information list.   Occasionally, I have come across the scenario where this list is empty and only shows “(All)”, making the list useless.

1. To resolve this issue, simply open the list in SharePoint Designer.  Select the list from the Lists and Libraries section. This will display the list settings page in SPD.
2. Click Edit List Columns
   
3. Click the person or group column to display the column editor.  Simply click OK.
4. Click the Save icon in the title bar of SPD to save the list.
5. Refresh the datasheet view of the list in SharePoint and now you should have people/groups to select from.

User Account Requirement for Farm Administrator error when installing PowerPivot

When installing SQL 2008 R2 PowerPivot in a SharePoint farm, you might come across this error during the installation rules checks:

I generally assign administrative permissions using domain security groups. In this case, I have my “Domain\SharePoint Farm Admins” account setup as a member of the Farm Administrators SharePoint group in Central Administration. All is good. Except, when trying to install SQL Server 2008 R2 PowerPivot for SharePoint, the installation wizard gives me this error. This wizard doesn’t do a great job of checking effective permissions. It is basically checking if the account you are logged in as is an explicit member of the Farm Administrators SharePoint group. So, even though I have the right permissions as far as SharePoint is concerned, I still need to add my account directly into the Farm Administrators group in CA. Once I did that, click Re-run on the installation wizard and the check will pass.