Issues with migrated site containing SharePoint 2007 Branding

Hi all,

Today I’ve solved a Branding issue.

With SharePoint 2007, we have decided to develop a Company Branding, that was used by default on all pages : a new "company custom" master page.

Then this summer, we prepared the migration of all our Site Collection from SharePoint 2007 Farm to brand new SharePoint 2010 Farm.

Faced to the cost reduction, and to be as close as “from the box” as possible, it was decided not to develop a new Branding for SharePoint 2010.

One part of the biggest job was to find and point out all the Sites that could give issue during the migration.

Nearly all sites were migrated without any issue, and we knew that with the use, we, uh… I will be face to  those special cases.

How did the issue was found ?

-          The end-user started to save his site as template (Site Actions à Site Settings è Site Actions à Save Site as Template)

-          Then, he decided to create a subsite with this template.

o   Site Actions à Site Settings èGalleries à Solutions à Upload Solution

o   Select the .wsp, and activate the Solution

o   Site Actions à Create New Site è Select the Active .wsp, Title and URL Name

Of course, the user got this first error (error that is not in relation with this issue) :

So, I wanted to point out this feature with the Get-SPFeature command :

Get-SPFeature -Site http://<my WebApplication URL>/Sites/SiteCollectionName

This command gave me the Feature’s name.

Then, I discovered that this “OpenInClient” was the SharePoint 2010 “Open Documents in Client Applications by Default” Site Collection Feature.

So, for testing, I’ve activated the feature on my test site, and this issue was solved…. But then, I got a new error message in place of the first one :

This is the remaining trace of the old SharePoint 2007 branding that was applied on each sites.

So, what is the situation :

-          I know that this error is the result of a wrong-cleaned branding Site.

-          When creating the new site/subsite, the solution is searching for this specific <branded>.master page, at the Hive 14\Template\FEATURES\xxxxx.Core.SharePoint.Branding.Web folder

-          This folder is not in the features, so, the system gives us this error.

How did I manage to solve this ?

-          Open the site in SPD (SharePoint 2010 Designer)

-          Check the Master Pages content : the <branding>.master is present, but cannot be found on the server

-          Editing the master page give this error message :

-          I’ve made a backup of the site via the Central Administration Backup and Restore GUI.

-          Then, I’ve deleted the faulty master page via SPD.

-           Save site as template, upload the new cleaned .wsp as a solution, then I’ve created a new subsite : No Error

That's all folks.