“Alert me” option missing in SharePoint

Issue Description

Recently in our SharePoint 2013 farm, I had noticed that the "Alert Me" button was missing from library tab in 

SharePoint Ribbon.

Resolution

1. Please try this article first -  “Alert me” option missing in SharePoint

2. If this solution dint help, try using the below STSADM or PowerShell command to enable the alerts:

STSADM:

stsadm -o setproperty -pn alerts-enabled -pv true -url http://webappURL

PowerShell

$webapp=Get-SPWebApplication "http://webappURL"

$webapp.AlertsEnabled = $true

$webapp.Update()

SharePoint 2010: Event 7043 "Load control template file /_controltemplates/TaxonomyPicker.ascx failed"

Error Description

You install Microsoft SharePoint 2010 RTM on Windows 2008 R2, you receive the following error message multiple times in the application event log:

Event Type: Error

Event Source: SharePoint Foundation

Event Category: None

Event ID: 7043

Computer: SERVERNAME

Description: Load control template file /_controltemplates/TaxonomyPicker.ascx failed: Could not load type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.TaxonomyPicker' from assembly 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c'.

Error Cause

The ULS log is created in a code path where all control templates are loaded into the web application. This is a one-time process which happens just before showing any UI to the user after an IISReset.The source of the problem looks like a stale control template in the control templates folder while the control itself has been removed from the code base.

Fix

This is not causing any issues except for a wrong ULS log message a single time in a web application process life time, the exception is caught and that template file is skipped. This message should be treated as log noise and can be ignored.

1. Navigate to /14/TEMPLATE/ControlTemplates/TaxonomyPicker.ascx user control

2. Open the user control in a text editor and locate the first line

3. Find the character string , and replace with a comma ‘,’ (without quotes).

4. Save the user control

Reference

Error - “The given key was not present in the dictionary."

PowerShell command to delete the query suggestion automatically added by SharePoint(suggestions are automatically built based on what search results are actually clicked on. It takes 6 clicks within a year for SharePoint to add a suggestion)), returns an error

Remove-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase -SearchApplication "SharePoint Server Search" -Language En-Us -Type QuerySuggestionAlwaysSuggest -Identity "ford"

Remove-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase : The given key was not present in the dictionary.

At line:1 char:48 + Remove-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase <<<<  -SearchApplication "SharePoint Server Search" -Language En-Us -Type QuerySuggestionAlwaysSuggest -Identity ford

    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidData: (Microsoft.Offic...eResourcePhrase:   RemoveSearchLanguageResourcePhrase) [Remove-SPEnterp...eResourcePhrase], KeyNotFoundException

    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Cmdlet.RemoveSearchLanguageResourcePhrase

I could not find a way to remove a query suggestion added by SharePoint. Maybe it is a bug. But we do have an option to block them. This way we can stop them from appearing on the search box.

To block the query suggestion "ford"

New-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase -SearchApplication $SearchApp -Language en-us -Type QuerySuggestionBlockList -Name “ford”

Start-SPTimerJob -Identity “Prepare query suggestions”

To unblock the Query Suggestions "ford"

Remove-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase -SearchApplication $SearchApp -Language en-Us -Type QuerySuggestionBlockList -Identity “ford”

Start-SPTimerJob -Identity “Prepare query suggestions”

To view the list of blocked Query Suggestions

Get-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase –SearchApplication "SharePoint Server Search" -Language en-us -Type QuerySuggestionBlockList

WARNING: column "Mapping" does not fit into the display and was removed.

Phrase               Type                                        Culture    Author

------               ----                                             -------       ------

ford                 QuerySuggestionBlockList            en-US      domain\user

User Name is displaying incorrectly in SharePoint

Issue Description

A user's display name is incorrect on a SharePoint site .A user in your organization has recently updated some of his or her information (such as the user's display name) in Active Directory Domain Services. The information was updated correctly in the user Profile Service Application. However, on a specific Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Site Collection, that information was not updated.

Cause

The user is not synchronizing correctly to a Site Collection. This most likely occurs because the user is not flagged as Active on the Site. In Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007, you could remove the user from the All People group and re-add them. This option is no longer available in SharePoint 2010.

Resolution

In simple words – Note the permission of the user in the site. Remove the user from the site and add again. Detailed explanation is below

Important: If you remove the user from the All People group, all the user's permissions to this Site Collection are removed. Before you remove the user's permissions and re-add them, note the user's permissions. To do this, on the Site Actions menu, click Site Permissions, and then click Check Permissions.

The All People group is hidden in SharePoint 2010. However, to access this group, you can modify the following 

URL in the browser:

<Site URL>/_layouts/people.aspx?MembershipGroupId=0

For example, the URL will resemble the following:

https://contoso.com/sites/<SpecificSiteName>/_layouts/people.aspx?MembershipGroupId=0

If you remove the user from this group, this also removes the user from the userInfo table in the Microsoft SQL Server database. When you re-add the user, the user's information is updated in this table.

Reference

SharePoint 2010: Usage files are not deleted, causing timer service problems.

On a SharePoint Server 2010 server, the Usage Provider (.usage) files are not deleted from the file system. Additionally, the .usage files keep growing."

The ULS logs were filled with the below errors :

Trace Management Service unable to delete file 'C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS\VSWSP02N01-20140115-2103.usage'.  Error 00000020

Symptoms

1) The “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Usage Data Import” timer job never completes.

2) The .usage logs are never deleted. There should typically be no more than 6 .usage files at any given time, but when you have this problem, you may find hundreds or thousands of usage logs in the logging directory.

3) Memory bloat (leak) within owstimer.exe. You may see the timer service consume much more memory than normal. Restarting the timer service will bring it back to normal, but it will build up again over time.

To clear the old .usage files from the file system, I had to restart the SharePoint Timer Services. The .usage files were not getting automatically deleted and this is a known issue.

MS recommends the below action to fix this:

1. Installing December 2013 CU for SharePoint 2010 (I would not recommend this as this too new to install on a PRODUCTION environment)

2. Set up a scheduled task to manually recycle the timer service (at least) once a day -- every 4 to 6 hours would be better.  You can use a PowerShell command like this to recycle the service:  

restart-service -Name SPTimerV4

Then you just need to set up a scheduled task to run it every 6 hours on every SharePoint server in the farm.  When the timer service is manually recycled, the open handles to the .usage files are released, and they will be automatically deleted when the next instance of the Usage Data Import timer job runs (by default every 30 minutes).  There should be no need to manually delete the files. 

Additional Details

Operating System: Windows Server 2012 R2

SharePoint Version: SharePoint Server 2010 SP2