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I have a Farm with multiple Site Collections. One of these Site Collections refuses to activate 4 specific Out-of-the-Box (OOTB) Features, namely:

  • aebc918d-b20f-4a11-a1db-9ed84d79c87e PublishingResources
  • f45834c7-54f6-48db-b7e4-a35fa470fc9b PPSWorkspaceCtype
  • 3bae86a2-776d-499d-9db8-fa4cdc7884f8 DocumentSet
  • 071de60d-4b02-4076-b001-b456e93146fe HelpLibrary

I get an error message like this whenever I try to activate any of these 4 Features:

• The field with Id {51d39414-03dc-4bd0-b777-d3e20cb350f7} defined in feature {aebc918d-b20f-4a11-a1db-9ed84d79c87e} was found in the current site collection or in a subsite

Facts:

  • I can activate/deactivate all other OOTB features
  • I can install/uninstall activate/deactivate 3rd party Features
  • Running the psconfig gui as admin didn't fix this problem
  • I'm running SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition, SP1, June Cumulative Update Refresh
  • The lone 3rd party web part installed on my production Farm is Bamboo Solutions WordToWiki Converter (I have a Prod Farm and a Test Farm - both are suffering from the same Feature activation problem)
  • All other Site Collections are working just fine with respect to Feature activation

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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2 Answers 2

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It seems like your problem is that a site column with ID is already exist at root or sub sites. This site is created typically by SharePoint publishing infrastructure and it corresponds to PublishingStartDate site column. This is (typically) installed by a hidden FEATURE when publishing feature is activated.

Use following script to find the webs in which it exists:

$url = Read-Host -Prompt "Provide Url for the web";
$fieldID = "51d39414-03dc-4bd0-b777-d3e20cb350f7"
$site = Get-SPSite $url
foreach ($web in $site.AllWebs)
{   
    foreach ($field in $web.Fields)
    {
        if ($field.Id -eq $fieldID)
        {
            $msg = [String]::Format("{0} contains the field.", $web.Url);
            Write-Host $msg
        }
    }
}

To be honest, I dont know how the field was created and how would you get rid of it especially if it is in use.

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  • Maybe add an extra foreach, looping over the content types and show the ctypes that use the field?
    – Colin
    Commented Jan 18, 2012 at 17:59
  • Excellent script, thank you Ashish! Using the script, I was able to find the problem Sites very quickly.
    – Paul
    Commented Jan 19, 2012 at 15:54
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After I used Ashish's excellent script above, my solution was to delete, then recreate the Sites that were causing the issue. Here's what happened:

  • Site Collection "A" was created
  • 4 Site Collection Level Features were activated on Site Collection "A"
    • PublishingResources
    • PPSWorkspaceCtype
    • DocumentSet
    • HelpLibrary
  • Site Collection "A" was backed up
  • Site Collection "A" was deleted
  • Site Collection "A" was restored as a SUB SITE in Site Collection "B"
  • Site Collection "B" did not have the aforementioned features activated
  • Upon trying to activate any of those 4 Features mentioned above on Site Collection "B", the error that started this thread was thrown
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