Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer has stopped working

I've been facing quite an annoying problem when trying to modify a SharePoint page throug SharePoint Designer. I could open SPD without a problem and I could easily navigate to the page I wanted to modify and when I opened it, it did render the code and the design, but it also gave me a dialog box to "Choose an encoding". Whatever endocing I selected, SPD immediately stopped working, every single time I tried it.

Luckily, I've found a workaround for this: in stead of opening the page in "Design" or "Split" mode, open it in "Code" view first. Then, when everything has loaded, just switch to Design or Split and it will work (well, it did for me...). To do this, just open SPD without opening the page already and pick "View" --> "Page" --> "Code".

8 comments:

djean said...

I have a custom form that gives "Microsoft Sharepoint Designer has stopped working." I have already rebuilt it 3 times.

I have tried single clicking on the file in the folder view (to the left). Then, I go to the menu - View - Page - Code. Nothing happens.

If someone can do this, please reply as to what I am missing.

Thansks!

Tom said...

Hi Donna,

I'm not sure if this isn't already what you're doing, but just to make sure: after selecting "View - Page - Code", you need to double click your file to open it in code view. After your code has loaded, you can switch to Design or Split view through the same menu or by clicking on the corresponding links in the lower left bottom.

djean said...

That is what I'm doing - so possibly I have a different problem. When I preview in browser it looks great! But, I have no access at all to the form.

Thanks,

Donna.

djean said...

After rebuilding the custom form at least 4-5 times, the list itself three times (once on a different site), I discovered that if I remove the one person or group field (with the people picker) that exists in the form, I am able to edit the newform.aspx page - and when closing and reopening it, I do not receive the error. I saw on another site that the people group field sometimes causes the form to not display (but not crash) - so I thought I would remove it to see what would happen. Does anyone know why the person or group field would cause the "Microsoft Sharepoint Designer has stopped message" when included on a custom form?

Tom said...

Thanks for the update Donna! To me, it sounds like a bug in SharePoint Designer. SharePoint Designer 2010 should be better and more stable than the current version, so hopefully it will fix your problem too, cause it sounds really annoying.

djean said...

Update... After reading a post on how the person or group field can cause the newform to not display (somehow related to a problem with support pack 1), I removed it and rebuilt the form and it worked - I was able to close and reopen the form without the "stopped working" error. However, I had previewed the form from within SPD and it looked great - but, when I went to the list and clicked on new item button, I received error that url does not exist. What I had done was removed the default webpart from the form instead of hiding it. Therefore, I had to start again and rebuld the entire list. This time after customizing the newform.apx, as always. I received the "stopped working." Then, I rebuilt the custom form again - but this time not deleting any items - just changing the visible parameter to false and changing the row height to 0px. This has the same affect as deleting the fields that I do not want the users to see but does not crash the form. On this final rebuild, I left the person or group field - so that field was evidently not causing the problem. So, the end result is that if I delete rows on my custom form and close the reopen the form, the "Microsoft Sharepoint Designer has stopped working" appears. I have no idea why I can't delete rows any more... I have done so on many custom form in the past. Any Input?

Anonymous said...

This is one of the best things I have ever read - THANK YOU SO MUCH! I have struggled with this for weeks, rebuilding forms, giving up, trying again, only to find nothing I have done can be opened up again in SPD. I found this post and I think I might get my life back.
I could not open in code view, but could open with notepad, change the code and I am now back in business.
Again - THANK YOU so much for sharing this valuable information.

Used PC Supplier said...

Nice Blog Post !