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SharePoint 2016 Troubleshooting: The feature failed to activate because a list at PublishingImages already exists in this site.

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Issue

After clicking to activate the SharePoint Server Publishing site feature, you experienc the following error message presented in the browser:

Sorry, something went wrong

The feature failed to activate because a list at 'PublishingImages' already

exists in this site. Delete or rename the list and try activating the feature

again.

Technical Details

Troubleshoot issues with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation.

Correlation ID: 5322469f-9d45-f042-bd81-108f5b3e9c0f

Date and Time: [date/time]

Troubleshooting

1. SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure

Verified that the parent site collection feature, SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure, is activated. 

2. All Contents view

Go to the All Contents view and search. for a PublishingImages library.

If you can't find one, go to next step.

3. Connect to PublishingImages libary

Try connecting to this library. 

.../sites/SITE1/PublishingImages

If you find it does not exist in the site, check next step.

4. Correlation ID in farm CA server

Search for the correlation ID in the appropriate time period ULS log on the farm's CA server, but not found.

5. Correlation ID in WFE server

Search for the correlation ID in the appropriate time period ULS log on the farm's WFE server and found it.

There might be a lot of entries entries associated with correlation ID.

6. Find the entry referring to "Images" Library

Searching through the entries, you might find the entry referring to a "Images" library that couldn't be created.

7. Connect to the entry found.

Successfully connected to this resource:

.../sites/SITE1/Images

8. Check the entry title/name

Connecting to this library, found that it was titled differently in this case Images1.  This suggested that there had been some previous activity involving activating the SharePoint Server Publishing site feature; and that this feature had been de-activated at some point in the past and then perhaps an attempt to re-activate it, followed by the above error, and then an attempt to side-step the error by changing only the title of the Images library, which failed.

Solution

Match title and name

Change the name of the Images1 library also to "Images1", so that title and name matched.

Re-attempted to activate the SharePoint Server Publishing site feature.  This time it completed as expected; a new "Images" library was created.

Conclusion

If this error is experienced when attempting to activate the web-scope SharePoint Server Publishing feature, just do a quick check for the library by connecting to ".../Images".  If this succeeds, you know what the problem is and how to solve it.

References

Notes

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