“Cannot complete this action.” When calling ApplyWebTemplate()

Question

SPWebApplication webApp = SPContext.Current.Site.WebApplication;

        using (SPSite site = webApp.Sites.Add("/sites/site3", "SharePoint", null, 1033, null, "administrator", "Administrator", "admin@admin.com"))
        {
            SPWeb rootWeb = site.RootWeb;

            SPWebTemplateCollection webTemplates = site.RootWeb.GetAvailableWebTemplates(1033);
            SPWebTemplate webTemplate = (from SPWebTemplate t
                                         in webTemplates
                                         where t.Title.Equals("NameOfTemplate")
                                         select t).FirstOrDefault();
            if (webTemplate != null)
            {
                site.RootWeb.ApplyWebTemplate(webTemplate.Name);
            }
        }

ApplyWebTemplate() is raising an SPException. The only further details (including from the InnerException property) I have is that it says:

"Cannot complete this action. Please try again. 0x80004005" with the stacktrace clearly leading me back to ApplyWebTemplate().

This template that I'm applying did call on a custom content type/page layout I had - so I removed all that to ensure that there were no 'missing file' issues.

Can anybody shed any light on where this exception could be coming from?

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

Use the overload that takes the SPWebTemplate object instead of the string, like this:

site.RootWeb.ApplyWebTemplate(webTemplate); 

Answer 2

Sorted! Mostly down to the fact I found this article:

http://blog.brianfarnhill.com/2009/04/cannot-complete-this-action-when-trying-to-create-a-document-library

Refer to Daniel Scott's comment at the bottom - the onet.xml file needed a element somewhere in there, even if it was empty.