Problem: Site owner receives the following error when trying to use the ‘Import Spreadsheet’ option to create a list from Excel within SharePoint. Same error when trying to export existing list to Excel.

Resolution:
Note: although this worked in this specific scenario, it may not work in others. There are a lot of variables that I did not have time to drill down into, but lucky for me, the issue was resolve

- Verified user was using Excel 2010 32bit

- User was on a 64-bit machine

- Had the user download and install 2007 Office Data Connectivity Components: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=23734

- Problem was still happening

- Had the user to an Office Detect & Repair and that solved the problem

Fight Comparison:

Morales Vs. Barrera III, both got the best of each other, but Barrera finally figured him out and turned it up in the last round.

Problem: In the ULS logs we found this error:

Exception occured while submitting data into the Stager (tableName=WAQueryFeedback ): System.InvalidOperationException: The given value of type String from the data source cannot be converted to type nvarchar of the specified target column. ---> System.InvalidOperationException: String or binary data would be truncated.   

at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlBulkCopy.ConvertValue(Object value, _SqlMetaData metadata)     -

-- End of inner exception stack trace ---   

Solution: I first asked the customer to verify that the ‘Usage and Health data collection proxy’ was working properly. He went into Central administration and verified it was accessible and you could get to it. After re-provisioning the service with the below powershell command the error went away:

$svcAppProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where-object {$_.TypeName -eq “Usage and Health Data Collection Proxy”}
$svcAppProxy.Provision()

Fight Comparison:
Virgil Hill vs Roy Jones Jr…after feeling each other out for a few, Jones took him out in the 4th

Problem: Another case of SharePoint Technologies and Configuration wizard (PSCONFIG) failing. Customer was running it via the GUI but it would fail with this message:

Troubleshooting: Of course, with this error, the first thing to check are permissions. Is the customer launching PSCONFIG as a local admin and does that account have farm rights within SharePoint? In this case, the answer was yes. I also made sure he was launching it as ‘Run as Administrator’, he was. Next, I asked him to run PSCONFIG via the command-line so that I could see more details: psconfig -cmd upgrade -force -inplace b2b –wait AND make sure to launch the SharePoint Timer service manually (because of a previous experience I had: http://blogs.technet.com/b/sharepointwarrior/archive/2012/12/07/sp-2010-psconfig-fails-with-missing-security-updates-that-are-actually-installed.aspx) but that did not work.

Resolution: Duh, ports 443 and 80 were blocked. After asking the network team to open these, PSCFONFIG completed successfully.

Fight Comparison: Holyfield vs Tyson II…I won by DQ just like Holyfield.

This tip came about because we came out with security patch that only affected FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 deployments that have the ‘Advanced Filter Pack’ enabled. By default, it is disabled. My customer wanted to definitively check to see if it was enabled in order to prepare to install the security patch.

How to check:

Option 1: run the command to disable it, if its already enabled or disabled it will tell you in the output

Option 2: Go to \FASTSearch\etc\config_data\DocumentProcessor\optionalprocessing.xml. In that file there is a line like this: <processor name="SearchExportConverter" active="no" />

If it is enabled, active will be set to “yes”

Problem: Customer migrated to new hardware/software, from a SharePoint 2010 NTLM authentication farm to a SharePoint 2010 Kerberos authentication farm. Upon testing the sites, they were continuously prompted for authentication. No account, not even the farm account, could get in. There was no prompt for the test URL only for a couple of Production URLs that were tied to a couple of web apps.

Resolution: It was the bottom of the ninth inning, after lots of troubleshooting with various team members, it was decided to TURN OFF the problem. So this is not really a resolution but it allowed the customer to go live. I’ll follow-up with an update to this post once we determine what the root cause was. The steps below suppressed the authentication prompts for the time being.

• Build a new non-Kerberos web application with a blank Content Database
• Detach that Content Database
• Detach Content databases from old Web App and reattach to this new Web App

Fight Comparison:
This was Leonard vs Duran II…No Mas!! No Mas!!

Problem: The first problem was that I am not very familiar with Project Server. Even though SharePoint is required for Project Server, they are different products. After migrating some Project Server 2007 sites to Project Server 2010 a few site collections had a problem in which when users would attempt to create a risk from the Risk list and it would error out with our dreaded correlation ID error. This is what I saw in the logs: “Document Management         52od        Medium         MetadataNavigationContext Page_InitComplete: No XsltListViewWebPart was found on this page[/”

I also saw lots of references to a non-existent web application. The web application being referenced was part of the former Project Server 2007 farm. After a lot of dead-end troubleshooting I looped in my Project Server colleague Brooks White and he cracked this nut.

Solution:

“Apparently, project sites exported from Project Server 2007 and imported into Project Server 2010 can exhibit this behavior (where you can’t create new Issues or Risks and can’t properties on documents) when they do not have an associated project under Server Settings > Project Sites. This project site had no associated plan.”

• imported site using stsadm import command, with new name
• created association of the new site using same new name as above

For more good reading and tips on Project Server, check out my colleague Brooks Whites blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/brookswhite/

Fight Comparison

The British Bulldogs vs Demolition…I was getting worked, just like the Dynamite Kid was as Ax and Smash teamed up on him. But then, he called his big bro Davey Boy Smith to help out, that changed everything…good teamwork.

Problem:
My job involves me sitting behind a computer and using my brain a lot, therefore, very little physical movement and overuse of my brain. Although I workout regularly I needed a goal to achieve in order to workout the way I used to. And I wanted to look forward to a weekend in which I did not use my brain, yet involved intense physical activity.

Resolution:
In March my little brother emails me details about this thing called Tough Mudder. Tough Mudder is a mud-run but from what I hear, it’s the most challenging one of all. 10-15 miles of obstacles, designed by the British Special Forces, that involve scaling 10 foot walls, climbing cargo nets, plunging into ice cold water, and of course, all the while, trudging and crawling through mud. Average time of completion is around 2.5 hours. I’m glad I found that out about its reputation only a few days ago because I probably wouldn’t have gone through with it. July 7th is the big day and we’ve been training for the past 3 months for it, so hopefully, come Monday, I will have some new bragging rights. I survived my first year at Microsoft, how much more challenging can Tough Mudder be than that

Hi everyone,

My name is Sal Rosales and I joined PFE (Premier Field Engineering) in August 2011. I am a dedicated SharePoint PFE and hope that this blog will serve as a way to help the rest of you SharePoint warriors with issues you may come across with this massive beast we all love called 'SharePoint'.

Let the games begin,

Sal