Site Collection Locks in SharePoint

Some time back, I ran into an issue where a particular site collection was in read-only mode to everyone including site collection admin, certain options such as the site action menu was in the disabled state!. Then I realized the site collection backup process was interrupted due to the disk-space issue, and it left the site collection in the “Read-only” mode! Which was documented in my post: SharePoint site is read-only to everyone

Screenshot from Read-only locked Site collection: Note that ribbon items are disabled!

Screenshot from Unlocked site:

SharePoint Site Locks can be Set/Reset in 4 ways:

1. Using Web User Interface – Through Central Administration
2. Using STSADM 
3. Using PowerShell
4. Using Object Model
   1. By .Net code
   2. By PowerShell

Let’s look at the examples:

Using Web User Interface:
Where to Look? Go to Central Administration > Application Management > Configure Quotas and Locks

Under Site Collection Quotas and locks, set the site collection to “Not locked” will release the site.

STSADM to lock a SharePoint Site Collection:

To lock site collection:
stsadm -o setsitelock -url <Site-collection-url> -lock <Lock-Type>

To get site lock status information of SharePoint site collection:
stsadm -o getsitelock -url <Site-collection-url>

Where <Lock-Type> can take one of the following value:

• none  – Removes all the locks
• noadditions  – Prevents from Addition
• readonly – Can’t add/Update/Delete content
• noaccess – You can’t view the site at all

More info: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262811.aspx

PowerShell to Set Site collection Lock:

To lock a site collection in SharePoint 2013 using PowerShell, use:

Set-SPSite -Identity <Site-collection-url> -LockState <Lock-State>

Where: <Lock-State> can be:

•     ReadOnly
•     Unlock
•     NoAdditions
•     NoAccess 

PowerShell to Manage SharePoint Site Collection Locks:

$SPSite = Get-SPSite -Identity https://SharePoint
#Check whether the site collection is read-only
$SPSite.readonly
#Remove the site collection's read-only lock
$SPSite.readonly = $false

BTW, SharePoint Site collections may be locked automatically, when they exceed the Site collection Quota! More Info: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263238.aspx

SharePoint Site Collection Locks Programmatically with Object Model:
You can Programmatically set the Lock status using SPSite object’s Properties:

•     SPSite.ReadLocked
•     SPSite.WriteLocked
•     SPSite.ReadOnly

E.g:

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("https://sharepoint.com/sites/sales"))
{            
	site.ReadOnly = true;
	//Set lock comments
	site.LockIssue = "Maintenance";
}

Tail: Backup LIVE Site collection without Locks:

STSADM:   stsadm -o backup -url <Site-collection-url> -filename <Backup-File> -nositelock
PowerShell: Backup-SPSite -Identity <Site-collection-url> -Path <Backup-File> -NoSiteLock

PowerShell Script to check lock Status of All site collections: Check Lock Status for All Site Collections in SharePoint