SharePoint My Site link stops redirecting users to their Personal Site
Hopefully this can save someone some time. The symptoms are:
- Clicking the My Site link in a SharePoint site results in an IIS 404 File Not Found error page being returned. However, you are able to browse directly to the users My Site by browsing https://mysite/personal/user. [https://mysite is the URL to the web application hosting the Personal Sites].
- Browsing anything in _layouts on this Web Application returns an IIS 404 File Not Found error page. For example, the following URL would fail: https://mysite/personal/user/_layouts/settings.aspx.
- IIS shows the _layouts directory and it is configured the way other working web applications are configured.
After doing some troubleshooting, we found that IIS is not trying to load any files from the Web Application content path. So the web.config is not even being looked for when browsing _layouts or the root of the My Site. We were able to find that the site collection in the root of the Web Application was missing. You can check for a Site Collection at "/" using "stsadm.exe -o enumsites -url https://mysite" or browsing Central Admin | Application Management | Site Collection List.
The root site collection in the My Site Web Application redirects users to their Personal Site. If the user does not have a My Site, this Site Collection creates one for them. It also displays the public information about users. Since this site was missing, SharePoint returns a 404 File Not Found message and no one is redirected to their My Site.
The reason the Site Collection was missing was because an admin tried to delete a user's My Site. The tricky part in this situation is when a user browses another person's My Site, they get redirected to a page in the root site collection. Here's the scenario:
- You need to delete user bobsmith's My Site and decide to do this by browsing the Site Collection, going into Site Settings and deleting the Site Collection.
- Open a browser and enter the URL to the persons My Site: https://mysites/personal/bobsmith .
- Since you are not logged in as bobsmith, you get redirected to https://mysite/person.aspx?accountname...
- When you click on Site Actions | Site Settings, you are really doing this on the root Site Collection at "/" and not the one for bobsmith at /personal/bobsmith. Deleting the Site Collection in this manner, will result in the root Site Collection being deleted.
- It is important to note that by default the SharePoint System account is the only account that can perform the delete action.
In order to get the Site Collection back, you need to do the following:
- Browse Central Administration | Application Management
- Click Create Site Collection
- Select the My Site Web Application
- Set the Title to My Site
- For URL, select the "/" option for the root
- Select the My Site Host site template on the Enterprise tab
- Set the SharePoint System account as the owner.
- Click OK
If you need to delete an individual's My Site, you need to use the Delete Site Collection option in Central Admin | Application Management, or the STSAdm.exe command-line (stsadm -o deletesite -url https://mysite/personal/bobsmith).
Comments
Anonymous
June 08, 2009
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June 30, 2009
Hi, Of course, I tried to delete a user's My Site. (to make sure we are on the same track, it's about MOSS 2007) After I completed steps 1 to 8 on the last page it's showing me the url of my new site collection http://server:7311/ telling me that I can access it. In there I have a button "Set as My Site Host" and once this has been set, this page should always redirect to the user's My Site. The problem is that when I click the button, I receive a message "File not found". Except this issue all settings are in place; when I click the link My Site doesn't redirect me to My Site. My Site is not created for a new user. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!Anonymous
September 21, 2010
This is exactly what has happened to us. However, the only hitch in this is that it will not let us pick the root in step 5. It is forcing us to put SOMETHING in the URL. Not sure where to go from that point?Anonymous
November 14, 2010
Same here like Todd --- I have to choose a URL under /personal/ or /sites/ - can't select the / root.Anonymous
November 20, 2010
I could get to the root by amending the Defined Paths. But as Todd mentioned, I have to put something in the URL. I also find that I can get to the root site collection fine through SP Designer. Everything is there and looks fine.Anonymous
November 20, 2010
I could get to the root by amending the Defined Paths. But as Todd mentioned, I have to put something in the URL. I also find that I can get to the root site collection fine through SP Designer. Everything is there and looks fine.Anonymous
December 12, 2010
If you can open the root in SharePoint Designer, then the root site collection is still there. This is why you can't create a new site collection at the root. If you're having the issue of the root site collection not redirecting, it may be a different problem than the one I posted about in the blog. You could try deleting the root site collection from Central Admin, then recreating it with the My Site Host template.Anonymous
December 12, 2011
Repair "site collection" root My root site collection is broken. So I've tried to create a new one using Central Admin and it doesn't work. (getting unknown error) I've tried to open the site collection root using the SharePoint designer; I cannot. I've thought the default.aspx file has been deleted by mistake but how I can copy a new one (using SharePoint designer I cannot)? ThanksAnonymous
February 08, 2012
The comment has been removedAnonymous
May 09, 2012
I have a simillar issue BUT it affects just one user. How do I resolve it? Thanks.Anonymous
May 30, 2014
The comment has been removedAnonymous
August 20, 2015
Dear All, in my case, I am using SharePoint multitenant 2013. I got into this problem after moving a customer site into HTTPS. The site worked fine, but all the links to "mysites" were broken, and shows an error 404. "file not found" After a lot of testing and eating documents, I found this way to solve it. I must reissue the command to set the "UserProfileConfig" on the specific site Subscription. First, get the site subscription of the specific site: Get-spsitesubscription Copy the ID of the desired site to repair. (ex: 1e06de52-43c8-4863-b9b2-f88e9101958a) $sub = Get-SpSiteSubscription 1e06de52-43c8-4863-b9b2-f88e9101958a You must need the data of the Service Application proxy (this will vary on your environment) $upaProxyName = "Hosting Farm Tenant User Profile Service Proxy" $upaProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where-object {$_.DisplayName -eq $upaProxyName} And the data of your "customer" $customerName = fabrikam $url = https://fabrikam.contoso.com Then issute this command to redirect correctly the mysites into the https url. Set-SPSiteSubscriptionProfileConfig -id $sub -SynchronizationOU $customerName -MySiteHostLocation $url/mysites" -MySiteManagedPath "/mysites/personal" -SiteNamingConflictResolution "None" -ProfileServiceApplicationProxy $upaProxy After the spell... the MySites worked fine again. I hope this will help anybody. Is very specific Deployment under multitenant and moving into https. regards, Javier