While working on a client’s MOSS 2007 public web site, I noticed that none of the reports in the Site Content and Structure page were not working. (There were duplicates as well, which I fixed by simply deleting the duplicate items from the Content and Structure Reports list at the root level.) I would click the item in the View drop down list, and the page would simply refresh. I checked the error log and found the following error:
SMObjectList.SmtReportsList: Reports List was not provisioned
Searching the web only revealed that other people were having the same problem. Microsoft wrote a KB article describing at least one symptom I was experiencing: duplicate report entries in the Site Actions menu. The article did not explain that the hot fix would also remedy the problem of no results showing up.
I emailed Microsoft customer support a few times, got the KB download, but didn’t feel very comfortable installing the hot fix on a production server just a few days before go-live. Also, the verbiage of the installation instructions seemed to imply that I had to export and re-import the site. Not something I wanted to do.
I then did some work to track down the error listed above by using .Net Reflector. The error was coming from a property called ‘SiteCollectionReportsListId‘ on the Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Internal.WebControls.SMObjectList.SmtReportsList class. Of course, like all nifty properties in SharePoint, it was private. I was able to figure out where the property was getting its information, which was simply from the AllProperties hashtable in the SPWeb at the root of the site.
Writing a quick console app enabled me to find out that the problem site had this property set, but it was set to a GUID which didn’t point to a list on the current site. This GUID wasn’t changed when the site was imported using STSADM! I then wrote some more code in my handy little console app and tweaked the property to the valid GUID. Voila! Reports started working again!
11 Comments
Hi,
very useful article!!!
Just one question:
How did you determine the valid GUID of the new report list since this is a system list?
thanks,
yiannis
I believe I used a combination of the SharePoint logs and Reflector to see that the Reports List ID is stored in the AllProperties collection:
pWeb.Web.AllProperties["_SmtReportsListId"]
That key ( “_SmtReportsListId” ) is hard-coded.
Use that key to find out what GUID the site is using… if you’re having problems with reports, this is the old GUID (invalid).
To find the valid GUID, just browse to the Reports list on the SharePoint site (SiteActions->View All Site Content, find Reports list). Once you’re looking at the list, click the List Settings button. In the resulting page’s url, you’ll see an encoded version of the current list’s GUID – that’s a handy way to figure out the GUID Of any list!
I then use that GUID (decoded from the URL) as a parameter in my command-line application.
Hi Marc!
Thanks. Your code didn’t work directly, but pointed me in the right direction. My problem was that the property for VariationRelationshipsListId wasn’t set. So I followed your example, and modified it to get/set this parameter instead. I used SharePoint Manager 2007 to find the ID. Read more here: http://sharepointdemo.biz/blogs/bjarne/archive/2008/05/23/content-and-structure-reports-not-working.aspx
Yeah, the code I wrote won’t do anything with the variations features. I’m glad that I was able to help out, though!
SharePoint Content and Structure Reports not Showing.
I am having this issue I believe. Can you explain this a little more to me in laymans terms or can you point me in the right directions. My boss really wants these reports to run.
Thanks,
Hi Jeff,
The basic cause of this problem is that SharePoint didn’t re-map a link to the Reports list. It’s a small bug in the SharePoint code (which may be fixed with the latest service packs).
The fix that I’ve listed below simply corrects the broken link to the SharePoint Reports list.
For a listing of the latest SharePoint 2007 service packs, see the following Microsoft TechNet page:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb735839.aspx
Hope that helps clear things up a bit!
Hello Marc
I think I have more or less just the same issue. But in my constellation the content and structure reports are working but not at the root of the web. If I break the structure down, I get the results. Now we want to have the possibility to get the reports from top of the root.
Now I checked out the _SmtReportsListID and the Content and Structure Report GUID, and the result is both GUID are equal.
The same is with the property _VarRelationshipsListID and the Relationship List GUID.
Do you have some ideas what I have to do to get a result from the top. Thanks for help
aga
Hi Marc,
I have the same problem as Aga. Reports are working on few sites and not from the root of the site collection.
Any help is much appreciated.
Thank You
Jag
great job, that worked for me…(MOSS 2007 Std SP1)
Good post. I had a similar problem and your post pointed me in the right direction. In my case the property __PublishingFeatureActivated was set to false. I used reflector to see the logic of the code for generating the reports and the code logic checks to see if this is set to true and if it is it generates the correct report. Not sure how this property was changed as it is set by the publishing feature in the root site under site features and this was set to activated. The issue was notice around the time SP2 was installed.
great clue in this last comment, I had a MOSS 2007 + SP2 site in which the reports wouldn’t show up in production but worked in a the staging site on same server
strangely enough no error whatsoever appeared in the MOSS logs (no clue in Verbose mode either)
so I compared the SPWeb properties with the API, and noticed that __PublishingFeatureActivated was missing in the production site (not even false, just missing)
simply added it with the Sharepoint designer (like explained here http://www.moss2007.be/blogs/vandest/archive/2011/03/06/sharepoint-spweb-properties-versus-spweb-allproperties.aspx), et voila, the reports work now fine