Problem : Share Point Error: “A Web Part with this ID has already been added to this page.”

Problem : Share Point Error: “A Web Part with this ID has already been added to this page.”

In a nutshell, here is the problem.

A web part was added to our index page (http://xxxx.xxxx.net/xxx/default.aspx). Image Web Parts and Content Web Parts had been added before without issue, but last time I added one the page refreshed with the following error:

“A Web Part with this ID has already been added to this page.”

Okay, fine, let’s just edit out this Web Part or delete it.

Well, I can’t get to the page to go to “Edit Page” to remove or rename any Web Part causing the issue. I do not know of any other way to edit web parts besides taking that route. And I do not want to delete the page and remake it, because it is the index of all of the other pages. The content of the page with the error is there (http://xxxx.xxxx.net/xxx/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx), but I could only get to it by typing the link in manually.

I think someone with more permissions could go in and fix this, but so far I haven’t found any way to resolve the issue from my side. I’ve tried reading the Microsoft Sharepoint site and have tried to Google my error to no avail. When I talk to the one with full rights, they told me that there was nothing they couls do but rebuild it. That doesn’t make much sense if we can still get to the content but, not the page itself.

Support answer: We need to know what conditional settings you used for the web and/or image parts.  It seems that the main page edits have corrupted the site and we may not be able to recover.  However, we will attempt to assist to the best we can.

Our response: I believe the last web part I tried to add was just a simple image web part, and the image it was going to pull was just a local weather image that is periodically updated (and as users refreshed, they would see the weather for our sites in a fairly up to date way). I didn’t change the name or any of the properties, as I was just trying to see if the thing would work before I started messing with any of the properties of that specific web part.

Prior to that I had tried to implement a java Weather Channel bar, but it never worked and I deleted it. I was using a Content Web Part then.

I do not know of any conditional settings I used. Could you be more specific or provide an example of conditional settings? I’m not quite sure what you mean, there? Bare with me, while I have coded websites and used Dreamweaver in the past, this is my first Sharepoint experience. And of course with my luck it randomly corrupts and crashes.

And that is the strangest thing about it all; I had used both of these web parts before, deleted them, added others, and so on and so forth, without this ID error happening. I never changed any IDs to cause a conflict, so I believe the error is something internal, hence it corrupting the whole site which should never happen in the first place when doing something this simple.

If you know of a way to fix this or could point me in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate your help. Thanks!


 

Solution: Share Point Error: “A Web Part with this ID has already been added to this page.”

Ouch. Bigger guns needed then I guess.

Possibilities that occur;

Get rid of the binary for one of the webparts (temporarily). See if Contents=1 works after that.

See if Sharepoint Manager can access the relevant property and delete the webpart;
http://spm.codeplex.com/

Use custom code like this to delete the webpart;
These actions are all riskier than I’d like.