SharePoint 2013 Web Application Creation Stuck at “This shouldn’t take long”

Problem: Create a new web application from SharePoint 2013 Central Administration site got stuck at “This shouldn’t take long” message for a long time. Root cause: Insufficient Server memory! Solution: Try closing any open application in the server and free up server memory. Increase the “Shutdown Time Limit” value of Central Administration’s…

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SharePoint 2013 Maintenance Window Notifications

In continuation to my earlier post: Site Under Maintenance Page for SharePoint, while the solution serves the purpose perfectly by displaying a typical “Site under maintenance” page during occasions like SharePoint patching, upgrade, etc. wouldn’t it be nice to intimate end-users about the planned maintenance window in advance? Well, SharePoint 2013 brings…

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Create Clickable Image Maps with SharePoint Designer

Image Maps in HTML define clickable areas in images. You can specify a list of areas (or hot spots) that will be used as the links within an image. We can create an image map for any classifications, such as frequently accessed items/regions/departments, etc. Let’s see how to create an Image map…

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Get / Set Lookup Field Values in SharePoint List using PowerShell

Here is my PowerShell code snippets to read/write lookup field values in SharePoint lists. Scenario: Consider you have a parent list called “Parent Projects” and child list “Project Milestones”. The “Parent Project Name” field from child list is being looked up from the parent list’s “Project Name” field. Get lookup field value…

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Enable/Disable Custom Error by editing Web.Config using PowerShell

To reveal actual errors in SharePoint, we used to turn off custom error page by editing web.config file, located in the root of SharePoint virtual directory. Open the web.config in Notepad Search for “CallStack”, Change it from “false” to “true” Search for “CustomErrors mode”, Change its value from “On” to “Off” Save…

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jQuery Rotating Banner (Carousel/Image Slider) for SharePoint

In continuation to my earlier post Rotating Banner for SharePoint using jQuery, one enhancement requested by people is: The ability to dynamically fetch images from SharePoint library, so that new banner images can be easily added, existing banners can be modified without touching the banner code. So, I’ve made changes to fulfil…

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Find and Delete Orphaned Alerts in SharePoint

Problem Description: In Short – When users leave your organization and removed from Active Directory (AD) they become orphans in SharePoint! Also their alerts!! Why we care about them: To keep SharePoint clean, we’ve to remove em’ from all SharePoint sites. So, I’ve written a PowerShell script to scan all site collections…

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How to Delete Site with Its Subsites in SharePoint – Quick Way!

Problem:  SharePoint doesn’t allow you to delete a site with its sub-sites. In other words, You cannot delete a SharePoint Subsite that has one or more child subsites. You’ll have to individually remove each and every child subsite prior to removing the parent subsite. Can’t delete subsite in SharePoint 2013: You’ll end…

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Blocked File Types in SharePoint 2013

Getting “Error: Sorry, something went wrong. The following file(s) has been blocked by the administrator.” in SharePoint 2013? Well, This is due to Blocked File Types configuration in SharePoint 2013! What is Blocked File Types in SharePoint 2013? Blocked file types is a security mechanism in SharePoint to restrict files based on…

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How to Add Promoted Search Results using Query Rules in SharePoint 2013?

We can promote search results based on specific search phrases entered by end-users in SharePoint 2013. The promoted results will appear on the top of the search results. As best bets/visual best bets are replaced with “Query Rules” in SharePoint 2013, this is a powerful way to promote search results within SharePoint…

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