SharePoint OWA Power Point error - Sorry, PowerPoint Web App Ran into a problem opening this presentation.

In SharePoint 2013 environment I got an error PowerPoint while previewing the document. Error message states that “sorry PowerPoint web app ran into a problem opening this presentation to view this presentation please open it in Microsoft PowerPoint” as shown the image below.

I am seeing this only one Power Point documents only. Word apps and all the other office are working as expected. By double clicking on the document it is opening as expected.

I have verified ULS logs and IIS logs on trouble shooting this error. I didn’t any information on this error. Tried using fiddler to get any of the information. But no luck. Verified few posts and did following,

•  Tried to rebuild the Office Web App servers
•   By passed the host files targeting OWA server
•  Changed service accounts

All of the options are not worked. Finally one of the post suggested to clear the cache in “d” folder on “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\OfficeWebApps\Working\d” location in Office Web App server as shown the image below (drive is dependent. In my case it is C:\ If you didn’t find ProgramData, you have set folder option to show the hidden files.)

Go the folder location and remove all the files in the folder (back up all the files instead of deleting). Wow…. It worked like a charm. Almost 3 days I worked on this issue but resolution is this much simple.

Hope this helps..!!!

SharePoint back basics – move site collection to another content Database using PowerShell commands

Yes, we can move SharePoint site collection form one content DB to another Content database. But before moving the database we need to check following things,

• New content database should be exists on the same server and it needs to be under the same web application.
• The account used to move the site collection should be WSS_ADMIN_WPG group and account need to have db_owner permissions.

Before moving the content Db we have verify the size of the DB by using following command,

$spaceUsedinDB = (Get-SPSiteAdministration -Identity (SiteCollection URL).DiskUsed
$spaceUsedinDB

To move the site collection to the new content DB create a new content DB in SharePoint central Admin by navigating to Application management -> Manage Content Database -> Create new Content Database

Run following command in SharePoint management shell,

Move-SPSite SiteCollection URL -DestinationDatabase Target_Content_DB_Name

This operation will take time depending on the site collection size. 

SharePoint 2007 error while unblocking a file - An update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action. The object SPWebApplication Name=XXXX Parent=SPWebService is being updated by XXXXX, in the OWSTIMER process, on machine XXXXX. View the tracing log for more information about the conflict while unblocking a fie type

While working with SharePoint 2007, unblocking a file extension, I got an error saying that “An update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action. The object SPWebApplication Name=XXXX Parent=SPWebService is being updated by XXXXX, in the OWSTIMER process, on machine XXXXX. View the tracing log for more information about the conflict while unblocking a fie type” as shown the image below.

To fix this error we have to clear the configuration cache in SharePoint server. To clear the cache we have to follow the steps below,

• Go to the server where we are seeing the error and stop windows SharePoint service in services.
• Navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\GUID (here GUID is guid of the folder, we can see the Guid number, Drive is not specifically “C” that might be any drive that SharePoint installed)
• If we are using Windows server 2008 folder path would be C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\GUID. If we didn’t see ProgramData file, we have to change the folder view settings.
• Back up the GUID folder another location, and delete all the XML files except Cache.ini file in the folder.
• Open the cache.ini file in any editor like notepad, select all the data, and delete it. Enter 1 and save the file.
• Start the Windows timer service in services.
• Clear the cache in all the WFE servers in the farm.
• Now we can block/unblock file without any error. 

Hope this helps.