12 August, 2013

import Spreadsheet failed into SharePoint as a list - SharePoint 2010

Problem Description:
I had one user who was not able to Import an excel spreadsheet into SharePoint as a list.

Error Message:
You are not authorized to view this page.  
You might not have permissions to view this directory or page using the credentials you supplied.
HTTP Error 403 - Forbidden

Troubleshooting Done:
-User is a site collection administrator.

-We got the file at our end and checked it worked fine.

-We also checked with the proxy settings but even after changing it to the same as we had it did not work.

-Asked the user to check from a different machine with his login it worked fine

-As it was related to excel tried checking on Microsoft office Diagnostics available in Office 2007.

And to my amaze it worked. We were able to import the spreadsheet without any issues.

Where is Microsoft office Diagnostics?

Start => all programs => Microsoft Office => Microsoft Office tools => Microsoft Office Diagnostics

If at all we have office 2010. We may have to run the Repair available under control panel.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know, Thank you.

Product Applies To:
-SharePoint Server 2010

-SharePoint Foundation 2010

09 August, 2013

Move subsites into separate site collections in SP2010

Recently one of our customer created a ticket and requested to move some of his subsites to separate site collections. I think this will be genuine requirement for everybody as rather than keeping the subsite, it’s better to keep a separate site collection.  

I worked on this request and thought of sharing with everybody so that it would be beneficial for the complete community.

Let me explain in basic manner so that there would be no confusion:

Let’s assume here are my subsites:


I wanted to convert / move the above subsites into separate site collections so that they would looks like:


Resolution:
Steps are pretty simple so nothing to worry about and we can easily achieve this requirement without any issues.

Note: If you have a requirement like the mentioned above and don’t have sufficient rights to do the operation on your own then request you to forward the requirement to your SharePoint Administrators so that they can complete this task based on your requirements.

Please refer the following commands which are very helpful in accomplishing the requirements:

Export command:
Export-SPWeb -Identity <URL of the subsite> -Path <Filename> -IncludeUserSecurity

By using the above command we can take the backup of the subsite.

Import command:
Import-SPWeb http://site -Path D:\export.cmp -UpdateVersions –Overwrite

By using the above command you can restore the subsite backup to the site collection that you want as per your requirements.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues, Thank you.

How to create a subsite in SP2010

Subsite is an integral part of site collection. There are several uses of subsite for which you can deal with as well as manage almost the same set of operations that you can do from the top level site.

Many organisations have some security policies and they don’t permit complete leverage to the owners to manage the complete site collection but one thing is very good that at list they can create multiple subsites as per their requirements.

Today’s topic is based on the same and would like to share this basic information with all of you so that there would not be any confusion in creation the subsite.

Here are the details:
-Open the website on which you are dealing with

-site actions

-site settings

-site administration

-sites and workspaces

-Create

-Enter the title, URL, select the appropriate template and click OK.

By this way you can create a subsite in an easy without being dependent on others / without referring any article or document/ without asking for help from anybody/ without taking any training.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know, Thank you. 

08 August, 2013

Access Services is unable to process the request.

Few days before I worked on one access issue but at that time the exception was different and this time we faced new error message.

Problem description:
While working on asset database site, trying to create new item and got the following exception.

Error message:
Access Services is unable to process the request. Click here to try again

Let me tell you access service application was already created and properly working without any issues.

Troubleshooting done:
-Checked the status of the access service application

-Checked the access SA proxy-whether it’s been properly associated with that web application or not.

-Checked the SharePoint logs as it is the most important location where we can find the cause behind it.

-Checked the event logs for any noticeable event id based on access.

-Try opening your SharePoint website in Firebug (Firefox utility) and check what exactly it’s blocking.  

IMP POINT:
Make sure that your foundation web application service and access services are running on the same box.


Resolution:
-Do IISRESET and check the results.

-If you check the logs and find any traces on security token service not working then you need to provision the security token service application.

Get-SPServiceApplication
$sts = Get-SPServiceApplication | ?{$_ -match "Security"}
$sts
$sts.Status
$sts.Provision()

If you have any different resolution apart from mentioned above then please share here so that it would be useful as well as beneficial to others as well.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know, I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issue, Thank you.

07 August, 2013

Operation is not valid due to the current state of the object

Every day we face some strange issues in SharePoint, if it’s working before then why it suddenly stops working! Big question-hmm??

Today we are going to discuss one similar scenario and I am pretty much sure you will comes up with different resolution’s because this issue might vary from environment to environment so resolutions might be different.

Problem description:
One of our content database has already reached the 100GB mark so as per Microsoft recommendations, it’s better to move the site collections to new database as it might create some problems while doing backup and restore. So the plan to move some site collections from existing database to new database. For this purpose, we have created a new database by means of central administration.

One thing I wanted to clear that we are doing backup-restore activity, we are moving some heavy site collections between databases only.
In SharePoint 2010, we have an inbuilt command to move the site collections between databases, please refer the following:

Move-SPSite <http://ServerName/Sites/SiteName> -DestinationDatabase <DestinationContentDb>

So we make modifications as per our databases i.e. URL of the site collection and name of the destination database.

As soon as we hit enter, the PowerShell command throws an exception as mentioned below.

Error message:
Move-SPSite: Operation is not valid due to the current state of the object

Troubleshooting done:
-Checked the status of site collection-whether it’s set to lock/read only?

-Checked the status of the database-whether it’s online/offline?

-Tried detaching the source and destination databases and reattached again but still no results

-Tried moving site collections to existing databases- this one works!

-Tried creating a site collection in newly created database- works!

-The site that we have just moved to existing DB- tried moving to the destination database (where we are facing to problem)- Failed!

-Tried creating a new database for different web application and performed the same operation- Failed!

-checked the health analyser again to verify for any new errors

-Found this error which we have neglected-Databases running in compatibility range, upgrade recommended.

<This is the main culprit>

Resolution:
We ran this command on the source database from which we were trying to move the site collections to destination database.

upgrade-contentdatabase -Name <> -Webapplication <>

Operation completed successfully.

Tried running the move-spsite command and executed successfully without any issues…

By this way we have overcome this error message but as I mentioned in the beginning resolution might vary from environment to environment so request you to please share if you have different resolution part from the above mentioned so that it would be beneficial to others as well.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know, I would be more than happy to help you as well resolves your issues, Thank you.

Product Applies To:
SharePoint Server 2010
SharePoint Foundation 2010
SharePoint Server 2013