I”ve come across this problem from time to time on SharePoint 2003 and it can be quite frustrating if you do not have a solid and in depth understanding of how templates work. I’ve built up some solid knowledge on template modification in SharePoint 2003 the hard way and that was diving straight into “schema.xml” and “onet.xml” to them. Yes there was pain, but going through the pain has helped me to understand how SharePoint 2003 constructs it’s templates which indirectly helped me to solve this problem fairly quickly.
If this error occurs it is because of a template that was used to create an area or list no longer exists on the file system. There following section will describe how to resolve both scenarios:
1: If an area was created with a template that no longer exists, simply complete the following steps:
- Click on Manage Portal Site from anywhere in the portal
- Find the affected area and click on “Edit”
- Click on the “Page” tab
- Select “This area uses the same template as the parent area”
- Click on “OK”
Note: If you would like to retain the template that was originally specified with the created area, ensure that it exists in the “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\1033\XML\WEBTEMPSPS.XML” file.
2: If a list was created with a template that no longer exists, it is a little trickier, but these steps should help:
- On the web front end server, open the following folder: “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\1033”
- This folder contains all the area templates that have been made available on SharePoint. Note: Please be careful when modifying anything here as it can cause havoc on your installation
- Open the “Onet.xml” file that exists in the “XML” folder of the area template where the custom list template was added too, e.g, \myareatemplate\xml\onet.xml
- In this file you will find a ListTemplates XML node which contains all the available list templates for this area. If your custom template is not in this list, you will receive the “List does not exist” error when trying to navigate to the area.
- Add your custom list entry into the file, save and IISRESET the server.
Nice one guy.