Let's consider today's entry to be an addendum to my two-part look at how to create a new SharePoint group which concluded yesterday, shall we? As regular rears will no doubt recall, that episode ended in shame for me ... not with the creation of a new group as intended, but with an unsightly error message instead. Needless to say, I knew that I had to get to the bottom of that error message today before I could move on to another topic, and I'm happy to report that I have done just that.
As I noted yesterday, the error message that I received -which was, I should mention, the first error message I can recall ever having seen in my 6 months as a SharePoint user- was, "The security validation for this page has timed out." What I didn't mention or, in truth, take much note of myself in my disbelief at seeing an error message in the first place, was that there was another sentence in the error message which preceded the following not-at-all helpful to an end user codespeak:
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequestInternalClass.UpdateMembers(String bstrUrl, Guid& pguidScopeId, Int32 lGroupID, Int32 lGroupOwnerId, Object& pvarArrayAdd, Object& pvarArrayAddIds, Object& pvarArrayLoginsRemove, Object& pvarArrayIdsRemove, Boolean bSendEmail) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.UpdateMembers(String bstrUrl, Guid& pguidScopeId, Int32 lGroupID, Int32 lGroupOwnerId, Object& pvarArrayAdd, Object& pvarArrayAddIds, Object& pvarArrayLoginsRemove, Object& pvarArrayIdsRemove, Boolean bSendEmail)
As it turned out, I should have paid closer attention to both sentences of the error message which were written in English (as opposed to the multiple lines written in Code) but, if I had done so, I probably wouldn't be writing this today since I'd likely have written off the error as being my fault in the first place. Which, by the way, it kind of was, since it was a timeout error, and since I was going through the process of creating the group while I was writing the blog entry, it's understandable that the operation would have timed out by the time I finally got around to hitting the Create button. Still, I submit that those unnecessary lines of code sent me into a bit of a panic, and that my comprehension of the second sentence in English was compromised as a result.
And so, when I revisited the scene of the crime with a cooler head earlier today, there was the sentence which would prove to be my salvation (and yes, when I say "there it was," I really mean, "there it was, where it had been all the time"):
Click Back in your Web browser, refresh the page, and try your operation again.
Guess which clause I had missed in my haste yesterday? It was the second one, "refresh the page." Guess how important that step is? Muy importante. As in, if you don't refresh the page, you're doomed to see the same error message for eternity. Yes, refreshing the page means that all of your carefully considered group creation decisions will be wiped clean and you'll have to start from scratch, but once you've done so, you (or your designated group/owner) will be be the proud owner of a new SharePoint group, like this one:
And that sure beats staring at an error message for eternity, doesn't it?
Posted
Nov 19 2008, 05:03 PM
by
John Anderson
John Anderson is new to both Bamboo Solutions and to SharePoint, but he isn't new to online community. Having recently departed AOL, where he was a Programming Manager for that company's social media team, John is thrilled to have joined the Bamboo family as Manager of Content & Syndication. As a member of the Online Operations team, John takes great pride in helping shape the creation and direction of Bamboo Nation, our nascent SharePoint community. Within Bamboo Nation, John writes the blog SharePoint Blank, in which he (always candidly, sometimes humorously, and even occasionally informatively) documents his daily progress in learning SharePoint. John is also profoundly uncomfortable writing about himself in the third person and is going to stop now.