Troubleshooting SharePoint 2010 Errors Using Correlation ID

SharePoint 2010 has made tracking down error messages somewhat cryptic. If you ever get an error message, usually it looks something like this:

Assuming that this is a production environment, the error message above tells you pretty much nothing! So how can we make sense of what is going on behind the scene you may ask. To answer that, let's navigate to the LOGS directory of the SharePoint Server in question and find the most recent log file there (which should be at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS\):

Right-Click on the file in question, and open it using notepad. Copy the Correlation ID you obtained from the error message and perform a search for it. You will have multiple entries in the file which will specify what page the error occurred on, what the Scope was when the error happened, what event was triggered when the error happend, and finally; what the actual cause of the error was, which depending on what you did to upset SharePoint will be different.

Pete Soheil
DigiOz Multimedia, Inc.
www.digioz.com