SharePoint - Delete all alerts!

 

Need to clean out all of the alerts from a development or testing system? Here's a PowerShell script to delete alerts. Run at your own risk... This will delete all alerts in all subsites in all site collections in all web applications (including My Sites).

Did I say… "Run at your own risk"?  PowerShell scripts like this one can do real harm on a production system and should only be run on a development or testing system. 

 

So… Run at your own risk… 

This should work in both SharePoint 2010 and 2013.

foreach ($site in Get-SPSite -Limit All) 
{ 
  "Site Collection $site" 
  foreach ($web in $site.allwebs)
  {
     "  Web $web"
     $c = $web.alerts.count
     "    Deleting $c alerts"
     for ($i=$c-1;$i -ge 0; $i--) { $web.alerts.delete($i) }
  }
}

Unable to retrieve topology component health states

 

Got this error while building a SharePoint 2013 single server install for classroom use:

"Unable to retrieve topology component health states. This may be because the admin component is not up and running."

The error was displayed on the search services administration page in the Search Application Topology section. At the same time the search crawls were stuck in "Starting" and all site searches were failing.

Searching the web found a number of reports of this error and numerous solutions that did not work on my server. Many of the solutions were from the days of the beta releases. I finally found the solution for my server on Marc Molenaar's blog site (http://www.mavention.nl/blog/sp2013-installation-lessons-learned-part-1) and he had a link to TechNet discussion where Paul Stork had the solution… an issue with the search proxy and a fix using PowerShell.  See Marc's article for the PowerShell script.

I now have a working search and all green checkboxes in the Search Application Topology section of the search admin page!

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Am I a SharePoint Site Collection Administrator?

 

In my training and consulting I often run into people who are not sure if they are a Site Owner or a Site Collection Administrator.

Go to Site Actions, Site Settings and see if you have a link to "Site collection administrators". If you do, then you are one!  (In SharePoint 2013 the Site Actions link is the "gear" )

If you don't see the link, don't stop yet… you may be in a subsite. Look for "Go to top level site settings" and if you see it, click it.

   

Here's the "Site collection administrators" links:

2007:
    

2010:
   

2013:
   

 

Note: You could have Full Control as a Site Owner or be a Site Collection Administrator and still not be able to do everything in your site. Your SharePoint server administrators can block certain features like creating subsites, even if you have Full Control.

 

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wssdemo.com has moved

 

I show the wssdemo.com web site in almost every SharePoint class. This week I typed the url into a browser to show the Silverlight Pivot control and only got a 404 Not Found error! Well today I found the the site… it has a new URL and no forwarding from the old URL. The new URL is:

www.SPSDEMO.com