My IT Experiences - Microsoft 365, SharePoint & Azure

 We're having trouble generating a transcript and captions right now. Try again in a bit. We received this error while trying to auto-generate captions for a video in SharePoint online. The error didn't provide any clue as to why this happens but then we noticed that the video was uploaded to Styles Library for some reason and once we moved that to another Document Library captions started working fine. Why this happens with videos in Styles Library we don't know, I couldn't find any relevant documents or articles but Styles Library isn't meant to be storing business content. Glad we found the solution and a simple solution!

With modern pages in a Sharepoint Online collaboration site, content would be aligned center with white space on either sides but with Team sites the content is left aligned by default and plenty of white space on the right. However there is an easy fix to center align content in a Team site: 1. Navigate to the Settings from top right of the page by clicking the cog/gear wheel icon. 2. Select "Change the look" 3. Select Navigation from the options. 4. Select Horizontal as the option 5. Now the contents on all the pages will be aligned center. Note: This setting is site wide and not just for a page.

We had a requirement to export Terms from a particular Term Store Group in our SPO tenant but I couldn't find a script that goes in to Level 2 and Level 3 Terms or if there is one out there I couldn't find it. I checked many forums and blogs and thanks to all those contributors who inspired me to come up with this script. This isn't perfect by any means and I would like to improve and clean this up a bit but I'm sharing this here so its documented where I can fix this later and also probably help someone. The script will export the data in hierarchical form in a .csv file.   # Tenant url $url="<enter your SharePoint admin url>" # Term Group names as an array $groups = @("")  # location of CSV file $FilePath="Terms.csv"  # Variable to collect all data and export to CSV $results = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList # Function to iterate through Term store function Get-TermsAsCSV {           try       {  ...

Issue : I came across a situation where certain items in a SPO List was read only and that too for just one user and this user is also a Site Owner with Full Control on the List and Site. It was a strange situation as other users were able to edit those List items - the affected user tried Data Grid option as well but couldn't edit. This was similar to item level permission set on the List but in this case it wasn't set. Resolution : After some external support it was found that this was caused by List Sync, once the sync was stopped the items were editable. Here are the steps: 1. Go to their List home page (App menu in the upper right of SharePoint -> All Apps -> Lists). 2. Find the list you'd like to stop syncing. 3. Click the ... button pictured below. 4. If the list is syncing, there will be a menu option for "Stop Syncing". Click on stop syncing to stop the syncing. If you want to disable sync for all users for a particular List then: Navigate to List S...

Here is one way to change the master page of a SharePoint site using JSOM, I have tested this in O365 site but it should work with on-prem version of SharePoint as well. This code can be run on a script editor webpart and it works on the click of a html button control. <script src="/_layouts/15/SP.Runtime.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/_layouts/15/SP.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> function ChangeMasterPage() { var customMasterPage = "/_catalogs/masterpage/Custom.master"; var siteRelativeUrl = _spPageContextInfo.siteServerRelativeUrl; var clientContext; var currentWeb; SP.SOD.executeFunc('sp.js', 'SP.ClientContext', function () { clientContext = new SP.ClientContext.get_current(); currentWeb = clientContext.get_web(); currentWeb.set_customMasterUrl(siteRelativeUrl + customMasterPage); currentWeb.set_maste...

I had this issue for quite sometime with a SharePoint Online project I was working on. I use Design Manager to create a new layout page and add snippets to the html layout. I would create webpart zones, add my webpart snippets on to the html, save and publish but the resulting aspx page wouldn't have any of my webparts in it. I checked it from SPD 2013 and everything looks perfect, I can see all the code snippets in there. It was really strange and I had no clues. I had some content search webparts in the layout and one content editor webpart with a link to a text file with some css in it. After countless hours on the internet I read about few other people having similar issues when they had custom css on the layout pages to hide quick launch. I tried removing my content editor webpart and everything seems to be normal. A new page created using the layout had all the webparts in it and even the layout preview was displaying fine. I needed this css somewhere on the page and ...

Sometimes when you login to Central Administration in SharePoint you cannot create, extend, or delete web application because the buttons in ribbon are disabled or grayed out. The same applies to the Authentication Providers button and if you hover mouse over this button this is what you see: This looks weird because you may be the farm administrator but still these buttons are grayed out. This can be solved by running Internet Explorer with elevated privileges (Right Click - Run as Administrator) or by accessing Central Administration website from Start Menu. Here is how you can do it from Windows Server 2012:

Excellent one from Todd Klindt: http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=261

This is a very common that we get authentication dialoge box while trying to edit an Office document on a SharePoint library from Internet. This happens even if you are logged in to your site using browser. It is frustrating for end user because he/she has provided credentials once before loggin in to the site and now when tried to open/edit a document (Word, Excel etc) again the credntial window pops up. Quoting Microsoft: "When Internet Explorer opens an Office document, the appropriate Office application is started with the path of the document. The Office application then tries to access the document directly from the server. This differs from other browsers and other file types. Most browsers download the file and call the application to open the file from the local cache. However, when this occurs, if the opened file is changed and saved, the changes are only made to the local copy and not to the server copy. To establish the richest experience possible, the first thing that...

I was trying out Excel 2010 for the first time and working with Excel services. I created an Excel workbook with OOB sales template and wanted to check the Excel service features offered by SharePoint 2010. While trying to publish the workbook to a document library from Excel - Save & Send - Save to SharePoint - Browse for a location - Save As I received an error which said “Path does not exist. Check the path and try again” I initially thought this would be an issue with the copy of Excel 2010 I had. But after doing some research it seemed the issue was related to the OS environment I was in because I could publish the same file from Windows 7 machine using similar Excel 2010 version. To get this working from Windows Server 2008 we need to enable a feature “Desktop Experience” from Server Manager Once I enabled this feature I could successfully publish the workbook.

I got some inspiration reading the Technet article Deploy by using DBA-created databases (SharePoint Server 2010) the other day. We can deploy SharePoint 2010 without the central administration (CA) database having the annoying GUID. If we run the SharePoint configuration Wizard after installation it will create content database with GUID. However, if we create CA content database using PowerShell we can have the database name of our choice. I have also referred to the SPModule PowerShell Scripts available from Microsoft. Here are the steps: 1. Run Setup on each server computer in the farm. You must run Setup on at least one of these computers by using the Complete installation option. 2. Do not run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard after Setup finishes. From the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell, use the New-SPConfigurationDatabase command to create a new configuration database,,for example: New-SPConfigurationDatabase -DatabaseName "SharePoint_Config" -Database...

We used to receive this error while deploying "wsp" files on our MOSS farm. This happened only on one WFE and not on the other. I was sure there was some process blocking the file deployment because this was happening only on one WFE. After hours of head banging we figured out that we had a SharePoint backup third-party application configured on this WFE. This application was installed on this WFE. We had our production deployment window normally in the afternoon on weekedays and weekends. This error would not normally happen on the weekends. Combining all these we figured out that backup application was not running on weekend afternoons. We checked with the storage management team here to pause or kill all backup jobs on a weekday that we had a scheduled "wsp" deployment. Amazingly we did not receive this error. Then we rescheduled the backup jobs accordingly so that it does not conflict with our code deployment window and the issue was solved.

I received this error while creating the SSP for a MOSS 2007 SP1 farm: Command createssp failed for SSP 'SharedServices2' Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: Unable to connect to database. Check database connection information and make sure the database server is running. ---> System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x81020024): Unable to connect to database. Check database connection information and make sure the database server is running I tried both from GUI of Central Admin and also createssp command of stsadm, both failed with the same error. I checked the ULS logs and found the above error. In event viewer I could see the event id 6141: Event Type: Error Event Source: Windows SharePoint Services 3 Event Category: Topology Event ID: 6141 Description: The site /ssp/admin could not be created. The following exception occured: Unable to connect to database. Check database connection information and make sure the database server is running. No matter wh...

Here is a list of MOSS patches, corresponding versions, and release month and year: Office SharePoint Server 2007 : 12.0.4518.1016 October public update (2007) : 12.0.6036.5000 Service Pack 1 : 12.0.6219.1000 Post Service Pack 1 rollup : 12.0.6300.5000 Infrastructure Update (IU) : 12.0.6320.5000 (July 2008) August Cumulative Update : 12.0.6327.5000 October Cumulative Update : 12.0.6331.5000 (October 2008) December Cumulative Update : 12.0.6335.5000 (December 2008) February Cumulative Update : 12.0.6341.5002 (February 2009) Service Pack 2 : 12.0.6420.1000 (April 2009) April Cumulative Update : 12.0.6504.5000 (April 2009) June Cumulative Update : 12.0.6507.5000 (July 2009) August Cumulative Update : 12.0.6514.5002 (September 2009) October Cumulative Update : 12.0.6520.5000 (October 2009) December Cumulative Update : 12.0.6524...

I got this error while trying to browse my SharePoint site from within the server. I tried in both my front ends and application server and got the same error. I double checked to make sure the user I'm trying to login to the site had enough permission and also that password had not expired or account locked. Nothing seems to help. Then I came across this excellent article by Spencer Harbar which talks about this issue. This error is caused by a feature in Windows Server 2003 SP1 and above called loopback security check. This feature prevents access to a site using its FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) from the server that hosts the website. Here is Spencer's blog post: http://www.harbar.net/archive/2009/07/02/disableloopbackcheck-amp-sharepoint-what-every-admin-and-developer-should-know.aspx There is also a Microsoft KB article that gives a solution to this problem. There are two solutions, disable loop check through a registry entry (not recommended for production servers) ...

To restore a SQL server database from multiple files we can use the RESTORE DATABASE T-SQL command. Before we do the restore process it is good to know the name of the “.mdf” and “.ldf” files in the backup set. To find this out we can run the RESTORE FILELISTONLY command in the following syntax: RESTORE FILELISTONLY FROM DISK = 'E:\Db_Backups\FILE1_FULL.BAK', DISK = 'E:\Db_Backups\FILE2_FULL.BAK', DISK = 'E:\Db_Backups\FILE3_FULL.BAK' In the above example I assume the full backup consists of 3 files, “FILE1_FULL.BAK”, “FILE2_FULL.BAK”, and “FILE3_FULL.BAK”. The files in this case files are locate in E drive “Db_Backups” folder. The above command will output the name of the “.mdf” and “.ldf” files contained in the backup set. Once we get those we can run the actual restore command in the following way: RESTORE DATABASE My_DB FROM DISK = 'E:\Db_Backups\FILE1_FULL.BAK', DISK = 'E:\Db_Backups\FILE2_FULL.BAK', DISK = 'E:\Db_Backups\FILE3_FULL.BAK...

I saw that this error was appearing multiple times on my SharePoint front end server: Event Type: ErrorEvent Source: Windows SharePoint Services 3 Event Category: Database Event ID: 3351 Date: 9/28/2010 Time: 12:06:00 PM User: N/A Computer: WFE2 Description:SQL database login failed. Additional error information from SQL Server is included below. Login failed for user 'NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON'. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp I did some research and it turned out the error occurs because "Windows SharePoint Services VSS Writer" service in that SharePoint box was running "Local System". I changed this to a domain service account and the error vanished.

We had an issue with our Index server running out of disk space. The server was old and didn't have slots available to add more storage. The approach I took had a disadvantage that I had to do a Full Crawl again. Here are the steps I followed: 1. Setup MOSS server with all pre-requisites; do not add server to farm Note: It is important not to install .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 on this server, please read my previous blog post for more details. It can be installed after setting up search. 2. Reset all crawled content from Central Admin. We may choose to remove the existing Index server from farm if required 3. Run PS Config wizard on new Index server and add the server to farm. If you have done a complete installation of MOSS the Web Application service and Incoming Email service would have started. Before configuring search we may choose to stop these services. 3. Start search service from Services on Server page of Central Admin - Operations and do the configuration. 4. Navigate to S...

While trying to configure Search Settings in my new Index Server, I received this error when I clicked "Search Settings" from SSP: In my farm I was planning to run both Index and Query services on same server. I did some research and found that this could be because of corrupted SSL for the Office Web service. The reason it seems to be .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 !! Yes it seems if we enable search service or configure Index server on a box which has .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 the SSL of the Office web service in IIS would go corrupted. I had a similar situation; I was replacing the Index server in my MOSS farm version 12.0.0.6219 I brought up this new server with same OS and framework patch level as the existing index server. That was a mistake because my existing Index server was setup in 2008 and that time there was no .NET Framework 3.5 that time. It got installed later during a patching window. But in my case when I made the patch level same on my new server I installed all frame...

We were getting this strange error while viewing our reports in SharePoint that was deployed using BIDS 2005: An error has occurred during report processing. Cannot impersonate user for data source 'datasource' Logon failed I tried many things but nothing worked. I did some research and found many blog posts which suggested me to reapply the password on the datasource file specified in the error message and save it again. That didn't work for me. I saw some check boxes in the data source file that read "Use as Windows Credentials" and "Set Execution Context to this report" and I didn't know what they meant. I unchecked those in my data source and then when the refreshed the page the report started displaying.