Quickie: Broken web part page? We can help!

jasbro — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 05:11:00 GMT

I'm called upon to troubleshoot numerous errors with SharePoint on a day-to-day basis, and some of the most frustrating are "Unexpected Error" messages which occasionally crop up on web-part pages. This is worst for administrators when they occur on hitting 'edit page' - worried admins can't then edit the page and end up running round in small circles, flapping their arms and screaming.

Well, there's an easy trick to get to the web part maintentance page.*

Let's say your malfunctioning page is:

http://sharepoint.contoso.com/pages/default.aspx

simply tack a querystring onto the end of the URL as follows

http://sharepoint.contoso.com/pages/default.aspx?contents=1

and hit enter. This will drop you straight into Web Part Maintenance, and you can remove the offending web part and get it fixed.

finally, don't forget if you have to check out the page to make changes, you'll need to check it back in afterwards - if you have full admin access, just hit 'publish', if not, get an ~~adult~~ admin to help you.

* I can never remember this when called upon to do it. I'm hoping posting it will make it stick in my memory

Just Another Web Application : web parts

Quickie: Broken web part page? We can help!