MS Programmer

A known issue exists with SharePoint / MOSS 2007 that produces the following error when attempting to delete a master page form the master page gallery:

This item cannot be deleted because it is still referenced by other pages.

 

This error might be expected if the master page was still in use, but the error is shown regardless if other pages still reference the master page or not.

A Microsoft Knowledge Base article exists (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=926812) which suggests setting the master page to a hidden state, but sometimes that isn’t enough. There are times when it is more than just a clean up issue, often it really is necessary to completely remove the file.

To completely delete the master page, perform the following steps:

1. Navigate to the Master Page Gallery page from the Site Settings page.
2. Select ‘New’ | ‘Folder’ from the menu bar.
3. Create the folder with a temporary name such as DeleteMe.
4. Open the site with SharePoint Designer and navigate to the ‘_catalogs\masterpage’ folder.
5. Drag and drop the master page to delete into the temporary folder created in the above steps.
6. Close SharePoint Designer.
7. Return to the Master Page Gallery and delete the temporary folder.

Attempting to open a SharePoint document library in Windows Explorer view by choosing  ‘Actions’ | ‘Open with Windows Explorer’ on a Windows Server 2008 machine generates the following error:

Your client does not support opening this list with Windows Explorer.

This is because the ‘Web Client’ service is required, but not installed on Windows Server 2008 by default. The service can be installed as a part of the ‘Desktop Experience’ Windows feature. To install the ‘Desktop Experience’ Windows feature perform the following steps:

1. Open ‘Server Manager’ from Administrator Tools.
2. Highlight the ‘Features’ node under Server Manager.
3. Click the ‘Add Features’ link on the right-hand side of the screen.
4. Check ‘Desktop Experience’.
5. Click ‘Next’.
6. Click ‘Install’.
7. You will be prompted to restart the server.

Thank you to Tihomir Ignatov for his post on this error.