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 Bug?  Edit.aspx pages, Survey Branching and more…occurs after you have the August Cumulative Updates or later installed and have exported/imported a site

I've come across an interesting scenario that I believe may be a bug in SharePoint 2007. To summarize, if you meet the following conditions, you probably have this issue and don't even know it yet:

 

1. You have applied the August Cumulative Update or any cumulative update after that (October, December or February).
2. You have exported a site with STSADM using the -includeusersecurity switch
3. You have imported the site somewhere else in the same SharePoint farm.

 

If you answered yes to the above prerequisites, or think that you will ever need to export/import a site, keep reading!

 

On a farm that has the August Cumulative Update or later applied, perform the following steps:

4. Open a command prompt and run the following command:

Stsadm.exe –o export –url http://<portalname>/sites/<Sitename> -filename c:<filename.cmp> –includeusersecurity –versions 4

 



In essence, you are exporting the site to a file, including any security settings, and any versioning that is present.

5. Verify that the export completed with 0 warnings, 0 errors.
6. Back in Central Administration, go to Application Management > Create Site Collection.



7. Give the site a title and URL, and use the blank site template.
8. Add in the site collection owner, and press OK.
9. Once the site has been created successfully, return to the command prompt.
10. Run the following stsadm command:

 

Stsadm.exe –o import –url http://<portalname>/<sitename -filename c:<filename.cmp> –includeusersecurity –updateversions 1

 



 

11. Verify that the import completed successfully, with 0 warnings and 0 errors.
12. Browse to the site that was just imported, and go to Site Actions > Create.
13. Select Survey.
14. Enter “Branching Test” for the Name, and set Allow Multiple Responses to Yes. Press Next.
15. Enter text in the question field for question 1. Leave the answer type as choice.
16. Scroll to the bottom and press Next Question.
17. Enter text for question 2. Leave the question type as choice.
18. Scroll to the bottom and press next Question.
19. Enter text for the third question. Leave the answer type as choice.
20. Scroll to the bottom and press Finish.
21. Click on Question 1.
22. Scroll to the Branching Logic section at the bottom.
23. Create branching by changing “Jump To” from No Branching to Question 2 or Question 3
24. Click OK.
25. Click on Branching Test in the breadcrumb to return to the actual survey.
26. Choose “Respond to this Survey”
27. Select any of the responses, and press next.
28. You receive “Error: Access Denied”

Note: The survey is using an Edit.aspx page.

 

You are also unable to edit an announcement that you create:

29. From the site that has been exported and imported into a blank site, go to View All Site Content . Click Create.
30. Choose Announcements.



31. Enter a name and choose to display the list on the quick launch. Click Create.



32. Browse to your new announcement list.
33. Click New > New Item.



34. Enter a title and body, and press OK.
35. Choose the item dropdown menu for the list item you created, and click Edit Item.
36. You receive  Error: Access Denied.

 

Looking for more proof?  If the site that you exported originally had an Announcements list, as all sites created with the default Team Site template have, add an item to that pre-existing list and try to edit it. You can.  This "issue" only occurs when an object that uses the Edit.aspx page was created after its site was exported/imported and the August Cumulative Update or later has been applied.

 

Conclusion

I haven't been able to pinpoint what it is in the August update that causes this behavior. I suspect that it has to do with security, specifically dealing with sites that are using inherited permissions.  It doesn't seem to be an issue with what features are enabled – I've made sure that the destination site has the same features enabled that the source site does, prior to importing the site.  I had originally thought it had something to do with .net 3.5 SP1, but I've tested this over and over again, and it is not dependant on any specific .net level.

 

If you are curious, you can try this on the prebuilt MOSS VHD from Microsoft. The MOSS VHD, as of this writing, is patched to either the SP1 or Infrastructure levels. Create a site and test it out, and then update through the August Cumulative update and try again. My bet is that you'll get the error message too.

 

I'd be really interested to hear from anyone who has either run into this issue, or who can debunk this. In the end – I'm just looking for a way to resolve this without rebuilding entire site collections from scratch.

 

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 9:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.