In SharePoint 2010 when you create a new Top Link Bar entry the Home tab will not highlight anymore

After adding page links to the Top Link Bar of team sites tab, the Home tab (the first one) was not getting highlighted anymore when selected. All other page links added to the Top Link Bar were being highlighted as expected. Some people came out with the idea of disabling the Wiki Feature to make Home highlights again. Even though it seems to bring the highlight back to the Home tab, it was disabling a very useful web feature. This is not a very efficient workaround in my humble opinion.

Since I had to work in this issue I was able to put together a workaround that resolves the problem without much effort. First, I will explain how to reproduce the problem, then I will show my solution. I am really curious to know how many people are experiencing the problem, so if it helped you, please add your comment.

These are the steps to reproduce the problem

 

1. Create a new site collection using the Team Site template

2. After created, navigate to the site and verify that at this moment there is only a tab in the top link bar (Home) and it is highlighted as expected.

3. In Site Actions, choose New Page

4. Enter the new page name and click on Create

5. After the page is created, copy the full Url of the new page to your clipboard as you will need this URL to create the link later

6. In Site Actions, choose Site Settings and click on “Top link bar” under Look and Feel

7. On the Top Link Bar page, click on “New Navigation Link”

8. Enter the URL of the new page you have created in item 3 and 4 and also a name for the link then click ok

9. Click on the newly created tab in the Top Link Bar and you will move to the page and the tab will be highlighted

10. When you click on the tab Home in the Top Link Bar you will go to the page, but it will not be highlighted

 

Enough of talking about problems. Let’s go to the solution.

 

Steps to resolve the issue

 

1. On Site Actions choose Site settings and click on Top link bar.

2. You should see all the tabs in the Top Link Bar

3. Click on the Edit icon for the tab Home

4. Make sure you are indeed in the item for Home and click on Delete (confirm the operation when the popup shows up)

5. You will be back to the Top Link Bar page and Home will not be available anymore

6. Click on the link “New Navigation Link” to add the Home tab again with full URL

7. Enter the full url of the home page in the Web Address field and “Home” (without quotes) in the Description field

8. You will be back to the Top Link Navigation Bar and Home will be the last entry

9. Click on the Link Change Order

10. Make sure you change the Link Order of Home to be 1. It will move Home to the first position and reorder the rest. Click OK when done

11. After clicking Ok check to see if Home is indeed in the first position in the Top Link Bar page

12. Click on the Home tab in Top Link Bar and you will be taken to the Home page

13. Home is now highlighted when selected (as expected)

 

You only have to do this once for each site collection facing the problem.

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 22, 2011
  That was it for me.  Thanks a lot!

• Anonymous
  March 25, 2011
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think its also sufficient to just change the path for the home tab to the correct full path and select ok, don't have to delete it and create it again.

• Anonymous
  April 03, 2011
  Hi Héðinn, The problem is that you cannot edit the original home url (it is disabled). If you could it would be a valid approach.

• Anonymous
  April 07, 2011
  Works for me, thanks.  How can we submit this as a bug to Microsoft?

• Anonymous
  April 13, 2011
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 09, 2011
  I am also having this problem.  One question before I proceed with this . . . I have a lot of information on my home page and don't want to risk losing it when deleting.  Are we just deleting the nav entry and readding it back in?  if that's the case I'm not worried but want to make sure that's all this does. Thanks.

• Anonymous
  May 09, 2011
  Hi Kate, This operation will not delete your page. It will delete a bad navigation link and create a healthy one.

• Anonymous
  May 11, 2011
  Great Rodney, Works fine. Thanks for share your solution.

• Anonymous
  May 18, 2011
  Worked Perfectly.  Thanks.  Now I know the trick.

• Anonymous
  June 05, 2011
  Not sure if this is best practice or not.  I created my next tab as a New Site.  Which was created as a blank site. When going into Look and Feel of the site I do not see a Top Link bar.  I must go back to Home and add that Site as a new tab under Global Navigation.   If creating the new site as a Team site I then do get the Top Link Bar navigation.   I know this has nothing to do with the original problem, but why isn't this consistant between site creation?

• Anonymous
  July 18, 2011
  Thanks a lot.

• Anonymous
  July 27, 2011
  Hi, how to add a child item to home

• Anonymous
  September 25, 2011
  Excellent post. Thanks.

• Anonymous
  October 06, 2011
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 30, 2011
  It Really saved my time of digging out CSS. Thanks  a lot Dude !

• Anonymous
  November 09, 2011
  This was the solution for me:  support.microsoft.com/.../925974   I had to change the URLs from /site/default.aspx to /site  for all of my top link headings.  After that things worked peachy. Very confusing though - would be great to have a context sensitive help tip for this in the Navigation settings screen.

• Anonymous
  November 09, 2011
  Hi Steven, The KB you mentioned is for a previous version of SharePoint and is a overkill to the issue presented here which requires a simpler solution. Glad your problem is resolved though.

• Anonymous
  December 13, 2011
  Thanx, it did what i was looking for

• Anonymous
  December 18, 2011
  Hi, In my SP website - Site Settings - “Top link bar” is not coming. Can you please help? Thanks

• Anonymous
  December 19, 2011
  Hi Arnab, Behavior differs from site template to site template. The subject of this post is related to Team Sites when Wiki feature is enabled. If this is your case, you should see the option unless you do not have the appropriate rights. If this is not your scenario you can still ask our assistance in the Microsoft forums for SharePoint: social.msdn.microsoft.com/.../sharepoint

• Anonymous
  January 05, 2012
  Thanks a lot. Works for me too!

• Anonymous
  March 08, 2012
  Had the exact problem you discribed - Your solution fixed it exactly as you discribed :-) Thank you

• Anonymous
  July 12, 2012
  Same problem. Solution works great. Thank you.

• Anonymous
  August 01, 2012
  I'm wondering .. has this been fixed in SharePoint 2013?

• Anonymous
  August 12, 2012
  Thanks Rodney,It  worked..!!!

• Anonymous
  October 18, 2012
  Thank you very much for saving my life. You are a good teacher.

• Anonymous
  December 31, 2012
  thanks!!! that solved my problem!

• Anonymous
  June 19, 2013
  Super...works great for me. Many thanks

• Anonymous
  November 18, 2013
  Thanks.  Worked like a charm...

• Anonymous
  November 28, 2013
  Thank you very much for posting the solution to this small, but rather annoying bug

• Anonymous
  December 10, 2013
  Thank u very much it is very helpfull..

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2014
  its working thanks :)

• Anonymous
  January 15, 2014
  Love it thanks so much?

• Anonymous
  February 03, 2014
  Thank you! Works like a charm

• Anonymous
  June 20, 2014
  Thanks man. Worked for me :)

• Anonymous
  July 09, 2014
  Thanks, this worked great.  I had to delete the Home link and create my own.  This worked since we have a few sub-sites.

• Anonymous
  November 04, 2014
  I worked! Thanks.

• Anonymous
  November 04, 2014
  It worked! Thanks.

• Anonymous
  December 30, 2014
  Thank you! very helpful

• Anonymous
  April 16, 2015
  I Had the exact problem you described - Your solution fixed it. Thank you!!!!

• Anonymous
  May 05, 2015
  Thanks for this- you saved me a lot of time and frustration! Appreciated.

• Anonymous
  May 11, 2015
  Thanks, Your solution fixed it.

• Anonymous
  September 20, 2015
  Thanks so much!

• Anonymous
  October 07, 2015
  Ditto. Worked for me thanks.

• Anonymous
  October 28, 2015
  worked for me to.  Thanks.  

• Anonymous
  November 10, 2015
  thank you very much it's help full I think

• Anonymous
  June 03, 2016
  Right on the nose. Thanks a bunch!

• Anonymous
  September 24, 2017
  Hi,In my SP website – Site Settings – “Top link bar” is not coming. Can you please help?Thanks