“The specified name is already in use” Error in SharePoint

Scenario: I created a new website and the root site collection with “Team site” template. I created a WebPart Page Document Library named “Pages”. Then activated the site collection feature “Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure”. Then activated the site feature “Office SharePoint Server Publishing”. Activation of this feature failed with the error “The specified name is already in use”. The ULS logs said that the ‘Pages’ list existed. Fair enough.

I deleted the ‘Pages’ document library and then tried activating the feature. Same problem.

I deleted the recycle bin and also cleared the site administrator level second stage recycle bin. Still same problem.

I tried creating the ‘Pages’ document library and was able to do it. Wierd. Deleted it again from both recycle bins.

After some research, tried looking up all the content through “SharePoint Designer” and woala….the Pages folder is still visible there. Deleted it and poof …. the publishing feature got activated successfully.

Interestingly weird…. will dig out more on this later but for now, I cleared level 1

SharePoint and AJAX

I am trying to create web parts that use Ajax. After some attempts, I realized that after the first post-back, the consiquent post-backs do not fire. After some googling, I found this excellent post from Mike that explains a step-by-step approach to integrate Ajax with SharePoint. A must-read.

Tip: SharePoint development and IISReset

There are many unavoidable situations when you need to do an IISReset during SharePoint development (for example: feature installation/re-installation)But as IISReset is an expensive command, use the following instead:

cscript c:\windows\system32\iisapp.vbs /a “[App_Pool_Name]” /r

Note: DO NOT forget the /r at the end. Even better, create a batch file as following:

Ar.bat
cscript c:\windows\system32\iisapp.vbs /a “%1″ /r

To recycle a pool, simply run AR.BAT <pool_name>

You can hard-code the poolname if you are constantly working on a single pool and create multiple batch files for each pool.