Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Calendar Overlay Malfunction Error in Sharepoint 2010

Symptoms


When accessing a calendar that utilizes the Calendar Overlay feature of Sharepoint. You get an error that says the error "Unable to find specified web in the given url" followed by a url. This may occur when viewing an already created calendar or when you're drilled down in to the properties for the specific overlay.

First thing, fully patch your Sharepoint server. In April 2010 there were some updates that fixed certain issues relating to this problem. You need to patch the server before doing anything.

If you're fully patched and still having the issue then you're likely viewing the site at an address that is different from the address that was logged into when the overlay was originally created. Generally this is due to accessing the site via an alternate AAM accidentally. Some ways that you'd probably do this without even knowing you're doing it:
- Visiting the site at the external fqdn and not having it set as default
- Visiting the site at the internal netbios name and not the external fqdn after setting the external fqdn it as default
- OR visiting the site at http:// and not https:// when you're using ssl as your default.


Either way, you're going to have to fix those issues before proceeding. Here are some resources I found useful to do that:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2025977
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sharepoint2010setup/thread/884698ea-390f-465b-abb4-f1fb374f1cdc
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2512804
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2516471

Now, to get to this point I used all of the resources above, but my issue was still not fixed! When I went to the overlay properties for my malfunctioning overlay I'd see the following:

Sharepoint 2010 Overlay Error Screenshot

Now, let's assume that I know for a fact that https://sharepoint.example.com is valid and set as the default AAM, I'm accessing it from the proper url and I have the needed access, but overlays still aren't working. That was the case I was in. So here's how I fixed it.

Solution


Ok, in this case I really didn't have to fix anything. I did have to find a little bug in the Overlay settings page. If you had previously clicked the Resolve button and caused an error then the error remained even if you had fixed the condition. So while I had fixed the issue, the overlay settings page still displayed the same error. The only way you would notice this is if you hit the "Resolve" button and notice that the error message text remains the same as before you changed the address. So, to conclude, even though an error is displayed on the overlay settings page, you can still safely hit the Save button and all will work correctly.

This stumped me for some time because the urls I was using were so similar (I'd just switched from http to https). I didn't even notice that the error still was showing the old url and not the new url I'd entered before hitting Resolve.

All is now well with my overlays!

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