SSRS report – SharePoint list error: an error occurred when accessing the specified SharePoint list. The connection string might not be valid

While creating the report by using SharePoint list, I got an error saying that “an error occurred when accessing the specified SharePoint list. The connection string might not be valid” as shown the image below.

I have checked all the possibilities for the error by changing the credentials in the report. It didn’t worked for me. Changed the connection string URL. Restarted BI development studio and Restarted Reporting services and finally restarted the machine too... No luck. L

By checking more than half day I have found the cause. The reason is, I have changed my VPN password recently and disabled UAC in my machine. So by connection the site, it is using my old password stored in windows vault.

We have to change the stored credentials in windows vault by using the steps below,

Navigate to Windows vault and in Windows credentials section select the site and update the credentials.

Now Iam able to access the list from SharePoint list  

SharePoint 2013 feature deployment error: Failed to get the list schema XML for feature in GetUserListSchema()

While deploying SharePoint solution I got an error saying that

Error occurred in deployment step ‘Activate features’: Cannot complete this action. By checking the error in logs I have found the exception details as

GetUserListSchema(): Failed to get the list schema XML for feature

By digging into the issue I have found that there is some scope activation details we are unable to deploy this feature. In the code I have added a list definition and list template associated to that list definition. I have added a new feature scoped with site and moved List definition feature to that. So here I have changed the List definition scope from web to Site and kept list template on the same scope. While deploying the feature I got the error on that.

To fix this issue we have to edit the list instance elements.xml file and need to update the list definition feature id in elements.xml file.  

We can update the list inastance elements.xml as

  <ListInstance Title="Name of the list instance"
                TemplateType="10000"
                FeatureId="List definition Feature ID"
                Url="Lists/InstanceName"
                Description="List instance description">
  </ListInstance>

By updating the feature id, Iam able to deploy the solution without issues. Hope this helps.

Error while opening files in SharePoint - Unable to open office files in SharePoint Office client

While working a SharePoint having heavy load got an issue for few users while opening documents/excel sheets/ PowerPoint in office client applications. Files that are stored in SharePoint, while opening files in client application got the following error:

Could not open "http://Servername/Documents/Doc". 

After digging into the issue, found that SharePoint Workspace temp files are stored in Office Cache location which is used for synchronizing as stored in the location below,

"C:\Users\login_user_name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\14.0\OfficeFileCache"

By cleaning the temp files we can fix this issue.

SharePoint custom workflow Error – This view cannot be displayed because the number of lookup and workflow status columns exceeds the threshold”

While working with SharePoint custom coding on lists, I got an error saying that “This view cannot be displayed because the number of lookup and workflow status columns it contains exceeds the threshold..”

After googling in to the issue, I have found the solution in this post. We can see this problem due to lookup columns value exceeds the SharePoint environment configuration value. When tis error occurs, SharePoint web services will refuse to return the documents. By increasing “List View Lookup Threshold” value, we can fix this error.

We can increase the limit in SharePoint central Administration by using following steps,

Navigate to application Management in SharePoint Central Administration and click on “Manage Web Applications” link.

Select the web application to increase threshold value, Click on “Resource Throttling” in General Application Settings in the ribbon.

In List View Lookup Threshold” section we can specify the maximum number of lookup that Specify the maximum number of Lookup, Person/Group, or workflow status fields that a database query can involve at one time. Change the value to bigger and click on OK to save the settings.