One of the page layout templates was changed in a SharePoint 2010 site collection that I was working on.  There were already over 300 pages that were creating using the old Page Layout.  Enter… Powershell!  It took about two hours to write this script (with help from The Google) but it will probably save a day of work updating all those pages individually through the UI.

The script takes three parameters, the old or current page layout name, the new page layout name and an optional –all parameter which will traverse all the sites of a site collection.  Enjoy.

# Description:
# Update the layout page for all matching pages of the current page layout
# Checkout, Change layout, Check-in pages in a site collection
#
# Syntax:
# ./UpdateLayoutPages [-PageLayoutCurrent] [-PageLayoutNew] [-all]
#
# Parameters:
# -PageLayoutCurrent     - The page layout that is currently in use and will be updated
# -PageLayoutNew        - The new page layout that pages will be updated to
# -all                     - Update subsites in the site collection
#
# Modifications:
# v1.0 - April 5th, 2011
# Initial version
#
# Settings
set-variable -option constant -name url  -value http://localhost   # Site collection
set-variable -option constant -name comment -value "Batch PageLayout Update"   # Publishing comment

# Function: Update-SPPagesPageLayout
# Description: Update a single page in a Publishing Web
# Parameters: publishingPage, pageLayout, comment
function Update-SPPagesPageLayout ([Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingPage]$publishingPage,
    [Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PageLayout] $pageLayoutNew, [string]$comment)
{
    Write-Host "Updating the page:" $publishingPage.Name "to Page Layout:" $pageLayoutNew.Title
    $publishingPage.CheckOut();
    $publishingPage.Layout = $pageLayoutNew;
    $publishingPage.ListItem.Update();
    $publishingPage.Update()
    $publishingPage.CheckIn($comment);
    if ($publishingPage.ListItem.ParentList.EnableModeration)
    {
        $publishingPage.ListItem.File.Approve("Publishing Page Layout correction");
    }
}

# Function: Update-AllSPPagesPageLayouts
# Description: Loop through all the pages in a Publishing Web and update their page layout
# Parameters: web, pageLayoutCurrent, pageLayoutNew, comment
# comment Comment to accompany the checkin
Function Update-AllSPPagesPageLayouts ([Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb]$web, [Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PageLayout]$pageLayoutCurrent,
    [Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PageLayout]$pageLayoutNew, [string]$comment)
{
    #Check if this is a publishing web
    if ([Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingWeb]::IsPublishingWeb($web) -eq $true)
    {
      $pubweb = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingWeb]::GetPublishingWeb($web);
      $pubcollection=$pubweb.GetPublishingPages()
      #Go through all pages checking for pages with the "current" page layout
      for($i=0; $i -lt $pubcollection.count; $i++)
      {
        if($pubcollection[$i].Layout.Title -eq $pageLayoutCurrent.Title)
        {
            Update-SPPagesPageLayout $pubcollection[$i] $pageLayoutNew $comment
        }
      }
    }
    $web.Close();
}

# Check Parameters
if(($args[0] -ne $null) -and ($args[1] -ne $null))
{
    Write-Host "** Update Layout Pages from-" $args[0] "-to-" $args[1] "-on URL" $url
    $pageLayoutNameCurrent = $args[0];
    $pageLayoutNameNew = $args[1];

    $site = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingSite($url)

    Write-Host "Checking if both page layouts exist in the site..."
    # Check if the current pagelayout exists in this site collection
    $pageLayouts = $site.GetPageLayouts($true);

    $pageLayouts | ForEach-Object {
        if ($_.Title -eq $pageLayoutNameCurrent)
        {
            Write-Host "Found CURRENT page layout: " $pageLayoutNameCurrent
            $pageLayoutCurrent = $_;
        }
    }

    # Check if the new pagelayout exists in this site collection
    $pageLayouts | ForEach-Object {
        if ($_.Title -eq $pageLayoutNameNew)
        {
            Write-Host "Found NEW page layout: " $pageLayoutNameNew
            $pageLayoutNew = $_;
        }
    }      

    # Do not continue if the either pageLayout does not exist
    if(($pageLayoutCurrent -ne $null) -and ($pageLayoutNew -ne $null))
    {
        # Update all subsites
        if($args[2] -eq "-all")
        {
         $site.Site.allwebs | foreach {
            Write-Host "Checking Web: " $_.Title
            Update-AllSPPagesPageLayouts $_ $pageLayoutCurrent $pageLayoutNew $comment
            }
        }
        else
        {
         $site.rootweb | foreach {
            Write-Host "Checking Web: " $_.Title
            Update-AllSPPagesPageLayouts $_ $pageLayoutCurrent $pageLayoutNew $comment
            }
        }
    }
    Write-Host "**Done"
}
else
{
    Write-Host "Missing arguments.  Please check your parameters"
}
#End

You are happy working in SharePoint, creating document libraries and new pages with riveting content, when you decide you’d like to open up a library in Explorer view and blamo!

There are various theories on this problem, but for me, the solution was to activate the “Desktop Experience” feature from Server Manager.  My development environment is on Windows Server 2008 Standard and SharePoint 2010.

Open Server Manager, Add a Feature:

Select Desktop Experience: 

Reboot the server and you should be able to open from the File Explorer until the cows come home:

There was a request to display items (“How-To Tips”) based on a date range.  Seemed like a reasonable request, but I didn’t see anything out of the box that provided this functionality.  To get this done, the obvious choice was to use the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) and create a custom list that contained the tip items.  In the custom list, I created the columns: Tip Description, Tip URL (in case a tip linked to another page/site), Display Start Date and Display End Date and Background Image (the requester also wanted a pretty image for the background of this web part).

Now that I had those columns to work with, I added a CQWP to the page and edited the web part to use my custom list:

To get the date range functionality, I used the Additional Filters section and my Date columns to filter on items with a Display Start Date less than or equal to [Today] and a Display End Date greater than or equal to [Today]. 

All that is left to do is add items to the list that have the correct start and end dates and the tip(s) appear on the web part:

There is more to do with getting the background image.  I will blog that someday.

In the following code of a web part that was doing a custom KeywordQuery search, I received the error “Property doesn’t exist or is used in a manner inconsistent with schema settings.”  The Properties that I was adding to the KeywordQuery had not yet been mapped in the Search Service Application, Metadata Properties:

//Get associated search service application
SearchServiceApplicationProxy proxy = (SearchServiceApplicationProxy)SearchServiceApplicationProxy.GetProxy
                    (SPServiceContext.GetContext(SPContext.Current.Site));

                //Use Keyword Query
                Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query.KeywordQuery keywordQuery = new Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query.KeywordQuery(proxy);
                keywordQuery.ResultsProvider = Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query.SearchProvider.Default;

                //Return following properties          
                keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("ProjectCreator");
                keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("ProjectName");
                keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("ProjectDescription");
                keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("ProjectStage");
                keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("Path");
                keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("Title");
                keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("Id");
                keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("SiteName");

To map these properties, go to the Search Service Application –> Metadata Properties page in Central Administration –> Application Management.

Select “New Managed Property”

Type the new Managed Property and add a mapping

In my case, I am mapping to properties that were promoted from an InfoPath form.

Once the property is mapped, re-run an incremental or full crawl on your content source which contains the property

A SharePoint 2010 solution I was working on contained several different types projects (MasterPage, ContentTypes, EventReceivers).  At one point, I started getting this error:  “Error occurred in deployment step Add Solution: Value does not fall within the expected range.” 

By unloading projects I narrowed it down to my ContentType feature.  The ID of the content type had a typo (I left a closed brace sign at the end of the ID).  While googling for this error, there wasn’t an exact match for my typo, rather it was the method to isolate the problem, which is to unload projects and features until I found the culprit.

<ContentType ID="0x010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F2006748130EC3DB064584E219954237AF3900F7AEFF
AB848C45AE85AC577F52131053}"
               Name="Three Columns Main"
               Group="My Pages"
               Description="Main Page with three columns"
               Version="0"
               Inherits="TRUE"
               Overwrite="TRUE">
    <FieldRefs>
      <FieldRef ID="{fa564e0f-0c70-4ab9-b863-0177e6ddd247}" Name="Title" Required="TRUE" />
      <FieldRef ID="{888D470D-BF80-4DF2-A2D6-72EBDFF90DE1}" Name="PortalHeaderText" />
    </FieldRefs>
  </ContentType>