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What Can Happen When You Try to Convert a Standard SharePoint 2010 Farm to Enterprise

I was investigating on what exactly are the differences between a SharePoint farm with Standard CAL and Enterprise CAL. And even more, with/without Office Web Apps. So first I got my single server installation built, with Office Web Apps, and took several screenshots. Then I go ahead to input my Enterprise key in Convert License Type page.

What? The input control is disabled? Current License shows I have SharePoint Server with Standard Client Access License, it’s not a trial, so it’s not my key problem.

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When move the mouse to the input box, it shows a default cursor, instead of a text cursor, which means it is disabled. I tried inside and outside the VM, different browsers, nothing really help.

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I don’t have the time to troubleshoot what the hell happened, so here’s the trick:

Get your IE8 developer tool out, and point it to the disabled input box.

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Now you can have the line highlighted. Hmm, disabled=”disabled”. Let’s change it to trick the page.

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I changed the name “disabled” to something that doesn’t make sense. I guess people can have a better idea for this but anyway.

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Now I can input my Enterprise license key to the box. Wait, OK button is still disabled. Time for the same trick…

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After Ok button is enabled, click on it, the feature for Enterprise CAL now can be unlocked without any problem.

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I don’t know what caused the original problem. But anyway, this is a quick way to have a workaround.

Note: this is not for production use. If you got the same issue on a production farm, better call support.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 17, 2011
    Do you know if it's only happenning to Single Server Farm installation? Maybe it's because Enterprise CAL is not required on a Single Server Farm installation scenario? (just a guess) Allen

  • Anonymous
    January 18, 2011
    @Allen: I think this is a bug, or a design issue. By looking into the source code this scenario is covered. Not sure why the Standard Alone has this problem.

  • Anonymous
    January 18, 2011
    Or simply follow this method I used :) www.allaboutmoss.com/.../sharepoint-2010-convert-license-type

  • Anonymous
    September 13, 2011
    Yeah, nice 404 error Shoban.

  • Anonymous
    October 14, 2011
    Sorry Guys, Blog was down. Please check now.

  • Anonymous
    December 11, 2013
    Hi, Thank you for the great post. I was able to enter the key but I get the following error: "This product key cannot be used to convert to . " I have SharePoint 2013 enterprise edition and Project server 2013. I'm 100% sure the problem is not with the key. Any suggestions?? thanks.

  • Anonymous
    April 15, 2014
    I have the same problem as Omar Jaber; "This produce key cannot be used to convert to ." (The end of the sentence is blank.) Any idea what this means? Thanks

  • Anonymous
    May 21, 2014
    Hats off to u Jie Li.. :). Good thinking