Sharepoint Designer: Unable to open Web site

Question

Just getting started with SP Designer on 2010. Getting the following error.

Unable to open Web site. Possible causes:

1. The Web server may not have Sharepoint Server intalled...

... and other things that are not the problem.

Anyone ever seen this before?

Answer 1

Found the solution, using this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2123563

Create/modify these registry settings on the client:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\WebClient\Parameters BasicAuthLevel = 2 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Internet BasicAuthLevel = 2

Then reboot the client. Tested on 3 different machines, including the sever, and this solved it in each case.

Answer 2

there are a million possible issues but the basics are:

• Ensure that you are attempting to open the exact url of the site
• If the site is configured with both a Forms Auth side and an NTLM side, open the NTLM side with Designer
• Make sure that your IT staff has not locked down the site by disabling access to the _vti_bin folders

If that fails, fire up Fiddler and then watch the traffic when you attempt to open the site in Designer. If you see 403s or anything in the 500s, then the real error details will be in those responses.

Answer 3

I just had this problem yesterday. I solved it this morning. My site was set to basic auth. When I set it back to integrated, SP Designer was able to open up my site. Not sure I get the reasoning just yet, but it worked for me!