File Not Found error on SharePoint pages

March 6th, 2006 // 3:03 pm @ Amar

This is another very common error I have found people getting completely stumped at. There is no error description, no debug information, nothing. Just a short sweet error saying “File Not Found”.

Don’t get stumped with this error. This is a very straighforward error which actually means that the page did not find one of the files it was asked to process. You must be wondering just what these files can me. So let me try to quickly rememeber on what kind of files I have faced this error.

Any includes, usercontrols added to the template are not accessible. Check the link ( relative or absolute ). Most of the time the link is wrong.

DLL’s missing. If you have added a webcontrol or a webpart in the template, then it might be that the page is unable to find the dll. You may have placed the dll in the bin directory in your website’s root but it might be that that particular page is in some other virtual directory and is referring to some other web.config and bin directory. e.g. For most pages from _layouts, the bin directory it referrs to is _layouts/bin and not _layouts/1033/bin. These kind of errors are very easy to overlook.

If you code for using an alternate header, and the relative path to use that alternate header may be wrong and not loading the page.

I cannot think of any other reasons for this error to generally appear. Let me know if I forgot any. Most of the time it is either #1 or #2 which causes that error.

Category : SharePoint

15 Comments → “File Not Found error on SharePoint pages”

Mark Kruger, SharePoint MVP

5 years ago

This error will also appear if you have reduced the trust in the web.config (especially with custom controls). I’ve been able to bump up the trust and correct the problem.
http://

5 years ago

Hi Amar ,

I have found the one more reason to get thease type of error

if any custom webpart referenced Microsoft.sharepoint.portal.dll later if deployed in
plain WSS site that time will get file not found error.
http://

5 years ago

Hi ,
Can you post the remedy for the error you have posted. i am using a custom webpart and i am getting the same error with out changing anything in the same site.
It was working and suddenly it is displaying file not found.Any help is appreciated.
Can you please send a mail if Possible.
Thank in advance,
Vamsi
http://

4 years ago

Has anyone seen this on a default installation of MOSS? I don’t have any of the custom controls, or template modifications mentioned, but still receive the error.

Thanks for your thoughts.
http://

4 years ago

Found out this was caused by not having permissions correct in the physical file path where sharepoint was hosted.

Note that I had to add two accounts
1) The account running the sharepoint server
2) The Sql account sharepoint uses to access data (not sure why)

Once this was added I was able to create a new subsite.

Hope that helps someone.
http://

4 years ago

I had the same problem. To resolve this problem I navigated Web Part conservation website and close all web parts in this page. After that sharepoint display error “WystÄ…piÅ‚ nieoczekiwany bÅ‚Ä…d” – in Polish – unexpected error.

Thanks for each answer.
chanaka

3 years ago

when am trying to advertise my custom web part am getting “FILE NOT FOUND” error, i have a clean web config (no stuff added), i didn’t change security also, please help me !!!!!
ramya

3 years ago

Pleas help me out.

I have a problem with opening up my custom aspx pages in _layout/alps (custom folder)/creatnewproces.aspx (custom aspx file).please help me out.

first we migrated from SharePoint 2003 to Moss 2007 and I could not find my aspx pages but after when I removed the web.config file from the alps folder it was working for some of the aspx pages .. But for some dependencies aspx pages are not working fine like, If I want to add up some document and when I click on add process button on the page which navigates to one more custom aspx which end up with ‘File not Found” error when we have the aspx.page in the custom folder (alps).Please help me out to fix this problem.

mail me on “mohan.ramya02@gmail.com”

I am stuck in between this process.

Thanks & Regards,

RamyaM
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3 years ago

Hi Ramya,

It’s very difficult to say what exactly may be the problem without having a look. However, I suspect that there may be some control in the master page with a relative referred path. Hence, when you open from your custom folder, you are getting the error. Do also check your custom page as it may be referring to some custom control / assembly which may not be accessible.
Koen

3 years ago

I had the same problem and all my dll’s I created were in the good place.
I found another reason: VS2005 added some assemblies and that caused my error.
Dan

2 years ago

I get this error also and based on a comment in this page, I realized the error comes if the redirecting page URI is somewhat different to the URI you use to load the site. For example: if you load your site by http://yoursite.com and then you try to click ‘View History’ on a Document, if get the ‘file not found’ error it is because the link constructed by sharepoint uses an URI not accesible at your desktop location, for example the name of the server instead of the name of you site. You will have only less than a second to see at the address bar, the URI that sharepoint is trying to call before redirecting again, in this case, to the error page.
Antony

1 year ago

Public key token of dll’s could be a cause of “file not found” error.
MHE

1 year ago

I had the “File Not Found” on the users.aspx and setting.aspx
and Assigned To when i click on the addressbook icon.
my issue was teh web.config file. on the main Root.
what i did to resolve it was to creat a new “Aplication” on the same sever.
and then use that file to replace the bad one. Note: try to repari it first but it would not repair.
regards, MHE
ashwin

1 year ago

I was able to find the problem by opening the page in Sharepoint Designer. I had published the page from my DEV site, and the site name for my DEV was different from the name of my prod.

my problem was that the Masterpage setting was still set to point to my DEV site’s name. Clicking on “Format” –> MasterPage –> Attach Master Page, and then click on “Custom Master Page” and pointing to the local master page (in catalog) helped resolve my issue.
Ken

1 year ago

We get this error when we click “Add new announcement”, if we just click once we get “File not found” but if we right click and select open in new tab or window, it works fine. Happens on multiple unrelated computers.

Any suggestions? (all replies appreciated)