Long story short:
This way, the next time I encounter the same issue, I’ll be able to find the solution easier by googling.
This category contains assorted tips, tricks and solutions regarding all the different workarounds and solutions related to technology pretty much in general.
Okay – another simple one. When you’re creating a new Office Group (or “Unified Group”, like they’re called as well), you might get an error for the alias already being used. Pretty simple, but still – let’s see how to fix it. Problem So, this error pops up, while you’re trying to create a new Office Group: The alias is being used by another group in your organization. Please try a different alias. An example script & output is shown below: # Historically, Groups have […]
This was a peculiar case! A cloud-based “service account” (in quotes, since it’s really just a non-personal user account) on a tenant with ADFS enabled started suddenly getting this error, while running console programs configured as scheduled tasks. Connecting to site failed: ‘.’, hexadecimal value 0x00, is an invalid character. Posts Related to “”Connecting to site failed: ‘.’, hexadecimal value 0x00, is an invalid character.”, when trying to connect to SharePoint Online”:5 ways to enable Custom Scripts for a SharePoint site collectionThe Scary Anatomy of […]
This post describes a simple way to get around the following error while running Connect-PnPOnline: “The sign-in name or password does not match one in the Microsoft account system.” Truthfully, this one is kind of simple and stupid – but as I’ve seen before, it’s surely worth documenting anyway! Below is an example of such error. PS C:\> Connect-PnPOnline https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/CommunicationSite/ Connect-PnPOnline : The sign-in name or password does not match one in the Microsoft account system. At line:1 char:1 + Connect-PnPOnline https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/CommunicationS … + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ […]
If your customers are anything like ours, some of them love the new modern library view, some will adjust and some just hate it and want to get as far away from it as possible. While embracing the new stuff is usually smart, there’s some value to sticking to what works as well. The Modern view is going to be the superior choice of the two (if it isn’t already!), but there are a multitude of reasons why one might want to revert to the […]
This post is about two of my favorite tools: Chrome SP Editor, and SharePoint Search Query tool. Or maybe better yet, an amalgamation of the two! Description I’ve mentioned the Chrome SP Editor before, and for a good reason. It’s a great tool for any IT Pro or Dev working with SharePoint on a daily basis. It’s maintained by a very talented developer, one of the people behind Valo Intranet, Tomi Tavela. If you’re using the tool, let him know on Twitter! But I’m not […]
Quite often you get the need to simply quickly query all the database sizes on MS SQL Server – most typically, for us, this need arises when a development machine gets low on disk space, and we need to check if some database’s log size has been growing, or if something else is wrong. In my daily work, I rarely encounter this requirement anymore. Azure has almost entirely obliterated the need for such diagnostics, since it’s so easy to spin up or scale up new […]
Microsoft is gathering all kinds of telemetric data out of the usage of SharePoint. I ran into an interesting JavaScript file, fp.js, on SharePoint Online doing just that. Gathering data. It loads on pretty much every single page request, so it’s something you’ll bump into anytime you open your developer tools! Your customer’s IT might even inquire about it – perhaps wanting to disable it for perfomance or information security gains? But what is fp.js and what does it do? Posts Related to “What is […]
There’s maybe a thousand things that can throw an “Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ServerException”, but a bit smaller amount of things, that are ambiguous enough to be called “Unknown error”. This post describes one, fairly usual fix for this issue! But let’s get back to the beginning for a second – you get what and when now? When running any code, that provisions new sites (much like https://www.koskila.net/new-pnpsite-fails-with-sitestatus3/), you get an error like this almost immediately: Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ServerException: Unknown Error at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientRequest.ProcessResponseStream(Stream responseStream) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientRequest.ProcessResponse() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientRequest.ExecuteQueryToServer(ChunkStringBuilder sb) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext.ExecuteQuery() […]
Whoops. Could happen to anyone, since the Azure PowerShell since (approximately) version 6.3.0 will cache your credentials between sessions without warning you. It’s really easy to run your commands with cached accounts, and end up executing your scripts against the wrong environment. In less serious cases, this means that you’ll end up running commandlets twice against the test environment, while you think you’re running them first against test, and then production. In more serious cases, you’ll deploy your ARM templates or run your cleanup scripts against wrong […]
This post is about delving into some legacy stuff – Microsoft has still kept SOAP-based SharePoint Web Services included in the product, since a lot of functionality has been built on top of them. We encountered an issue where you suddenly started getting exceptions for Unauthorized Access (-2147024891, System.UnauthorizedAccessException), no matter if you had access to the list or not. Error description We started getting this error, when requesting list items using SharePoint SOAP Web Services (namely, Lists.asmx): <m:code>-2147024891, System.UnauthorizedAccessException</m:code> <m:message xml:lang="en-US"> Access denied. You […]
This was a peculiar case! An issue I hadn’t run into before, and luckily a disturbingly simple fix. But first, let’s set up the scene: We were running a long-ish PowerShell script using a Global Administrator account. One part of the script was supposed to add and deploy a couple of SharePoint apps. But while running Add-PnPApp, we ran into errors: Add-PnPApp -Path $path -Scope $app.Scope -ErrorAc… , Error: {"error":{"code":"-2147024891, System.UnauthorizedAccessException","message":{"lang":"en-US","value":"Access denied. You do not have permission to perform this action or access this resource."}}} […]
This issue seems to pop up bafflingly often, so I thought it’s finally time to document it for future generations. Granted, it mainly considers Classic SharePoint (which is very tightly built around Publishing features) – but Classic is going to be part of our lives for quite a while still, especially for those of us still primarily on SharePoint Server! While trying to provision subsites to your SharePoint Publishing intranet you encounter either a generic “Access Denied” -error, or any error with 0x80070005 as the underlying error […]
While running “New-PnPSite” or actually any other site creation, method in PowerShell or programmatically, the site creation fails and you get an error like the one below back: New-PnPSite : {"d":{"Create":{"__metadata":{"type":"SP.Publishing.CommunicationSiteCreationResponse"}, "SiteStatus":3, "SiteUrl":""}}} Ouch! Where does this come from? In the code of New-PnPSite, the actual function call is shown below: var results = ClientContext.CreateSiteAsync(creationInformation); var returnedContext = results.GetAwaiter().GetResult(); (Source) So, the error is not thrown by PnP cmdlet, but rather comes from SharePoint CSOM. This is pretty normal and not surprising, but means we […]
This article applies to a lot of different issues you might be having with your SharePoint-powered site, or even custom functionality like mobile apps using SharePoint’s search index. I’ll list a few of the situations, which could be caused by these issues, below: You’re using Search to show a list of User Profiles with their properties, but it’s showing outdated or missing information Your intranet has the classic “Upcoming Birthdays” -webpart (only weather and lunch lists are more classic than that!) This webpart is not […]
This post explains how to add new Owners to your Office Groups using PowerShell. If your group has ended up without any owners, PowerShell might even be the only option, since the graphical user interfaces for Office Groups management are not that good. Background The hype around Office Groups kind of died down a little bit a while back, since their role wasn’t that clear – they didn’t really do much, and were confusing for end users. Back then, I posted about them replacing Site […]
First of all: you’re right and your eyes are serving you well. It has indeed disappeared. Starting in October, it’ll be hidden from end users. Microsoft is retiring the “Site Content and Structure” tool in SharePoint Online. Which kind of makes sense, since it’s quite an old feature – albeit, a very useful one. How to access “Content and Structure”? Even though Microsoft is retiring the tool, and has already hidden it from the UI, it’s still accessible. That’s supposing you had access to it in […]
Every now and then, an API or a method call comes along, that you need to be very careful with. “Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Web.AddSupportedUILanguage()” seems to be one of them. In this post, I’ll try and document my findings and workarounds for said method! Issues and solutions Posts Related to “Problematic behavior of web.AddSupportedUILanguage(int lcid) in SharePoint 2013 and 2016”:SharePoint Localization – a (somewhat) comprehensive how-to!The Scary Anatomy of a Microsoft License Fraud4 ways to enable Custom Scripts for a SharePoint site collection
SharePoint List Alerts. That magnificent functionality in SharePoint, that let’s you get a heads-up anytime someone touches your precious documents (so you can go and revert the changes), or changes files in Style Library (so you can go and remove that pink custom CSS they tried to add). Very useful for a lot of scenarios! The functionality is ancient, quite cumbersome and CERTAINLY not pretty, but it’s straightforward and quite reliable. On SharePoint Online, the notifications/alerts seem to work automatically, with no configuration whatsoever, and […]
So, you have a Client Id and a Client Secret, but don’t know if they work anymore? Maybe they are expired? Maybe someone removed them? No worries! We can use PowerShell to validate them easily! Solution By using PowerShell, it’s fairly straightforward to verify, that your Client Id and Client Secret work. See the snippets below for 2 different steps: First we validate, that the values work. If they don’t, let’s run another script to see if the Client Id exists but has expired. Validate […]
Another day, another Azure Active Directory error! So what’s this AADSTS70005 all about? While either developing or just trying to use an application that authenticates against Azure AD, you might get an error message that contains error code “AADSTS70005“. This means that you’re trying to use implicit authentication flow, but it isn’t allowed for your app. If you have access to the Azure AD you’re authentication against, it’s easy to fix! See more below… Reason You might get an error, somewhat like this: AADSTS70005: response_type ‘token’ […]
This post describes how to fix the error, where when publishing Azure Functions or Azure App Services you get an error like this: “Web Deploy cannot modify the file on the Destination because it is locked by an external process.” This is luckily another straightforward fix! Problem Azure Function Publish fails with a message: “Web Deploy cannot modify the file on the Destination because it is locked by an external process.” It is, indeed, caused by some of your files at the target of your publishing being […]
So, you got an error with a code AADSTS50011? It’s just Azure AD’s authentication acting up because of invalid reply address! here’s a bunch of different reasons that lead to this error. This post describes the variant where the URL’s case sensitivity differns from what’s configured. For me, the most typical scenario where I run into this error is accessing the app from SharePoint. Problem So, you’re getting an error somewhat like this: AADSTS50011: The reply address <…> does not match the reply addresses configured […]
This post describes one way to resolve a problem, where you receive an error like “The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.” when calling your Azure Functions. Problem Another day, another simple, yet kind of weird issue to solve! This time I was developing a simple Azure Function to access Microsoft Graph API. This particular issue was kind of bugging, since the error message actually had nothing to do with the actual issue and gave […]
So, you got an error with a code AADSTS50011? That’s ok – it’s just Azure AD’s authentication acting up because of invalid reply URLs! Since there might be a couple of different reasons for this error, this post also describes a couple of different solutions, that might help you overcome the issues. Problem So, you’re getting an error somewhat like this: But why? Did you mess something up? Well, if you’re the person who configured the app you’re trying to use, you probably did! Although […]
Every now and then, something like half of Microsoft’s websites will suddenly stop working – this applies to at least Azure Portal, SharePoint Online sites, MSDN forums, Office Onlineand probably a thousand of other sites. The error is most of the time something like this: Bad Request – Request Too Long HTTP Error 400. The size of the request headers is too long. Or like shown below: Or alternatively, you’re just stuck in a authentication loop forever. In this case, you don’t really have time […]
