Posted on

SharePoint 2019 Solution: “Sorry, apps are turned off. If you know who runs the server, tell them to enable apps.”

Photo by Artem Beliaikin from Pexels

Without an App Catalog and a setting enabled, your users may run into the following error when attempting to access the SharePoint Store from the “Add an app” dialog:

“Sorry, apps are turned off. If you know who runs the server, tell them to enable apps.”

If you’ve run into this issue and are a farm admin, you can enable the app store and ability in SharePoint 2019 by following these steps. If you’ve already created the App Catalog site collection, skip to step 4.

1. Log onto your central admin server and open central admin

Click to enlarge

2. Choose Apps > Manage App Catalog. Make sure the Web Application shown is the correct web application then click OK to create a new App Catalog (or enter a URL for one if you’ve already created one)

Click to enlarge

3. Set the App Catalog site name and description, URL, admin, and then end users who should see apps in the catalog.

Click to enlarge

4. Once you have an App Catalog, go back to Apps > Configure store settings.

Click to enlarge

5. Confirm the Web Application shown is the correct web app, then change App Purchases to Yes. Save your changes.

Now when users who were granted access to view apps in the store choose SharePoint Store from the “Add an app” dialog, they’ll be able to get marketplace apps as well.

Click to enlarge
Posted on

How to clear the SharePoint Server configuration cache using PowerShell

If you have several servers in your SharePoint Server (on-premises) farm, repeating the manual steps for clearing the configuration cache on each can be time consuming. PowerShell really shines in situations like these to help us be more productive and efficient.

The following PowerShell script can be used to clear the SharePoint configuration cache on a server. I’ve recently tested this on SharePoint 2019 servers with success. Just be sure to run it on each server for which you’re clearing the cache, then remember to go back to each and press “ENTER” in each PowerShell window as the script instructs you so that it restarts the timer service after all servers have had their cache cleared.

This script follows the same steps you’d perform manually. It loads the SP snap-in if needed, stops the timer service, deletes the xml files in the Config directory, sets the cache.ini file’s value to 1 to reset the cache, then restarts the timer service (once you press Enter).

Clear SharePoint configuration cache using PowerShell

  1. Run PowerShell as administrator (right-click, run as administrator).
  2. Copy and paste the following script, making no changes to its contents. It will work as-is.
  3. Hit Enter to run the script (unless using ISE, then click “Run”).
  4. Repeat steps 1-3 for each SharePoint server on which you’re clearing the cache.
  5. When this has run on all SharePoint servers you wish, go back to each and hit Enter in PowerShell to restart the timer service on each.
Posted on

Increasing MySite OneDrive for Business Storage

I recently ran into the following error message when using OneDrive for Business via MySites (on-prem 2016).

“No free space. Your site is out of storage space and changes can’t be saved…”

The recommendation is to empty your recycle bin, but the recycle bin is probably empty.

The default storage limit for MySites is set to 100 MB (which doesn’t go so far these days).

If you already have a bunch of personal sites created, it’s not as easy as tweaking the quota template. You will need to update the quota template for future sites, then reset all existing sites to use the updated template as well.

Update the Quota Template

Learn more on quota templates: Create, edit, and delete quota templates in SharePoint Server

Set existing sites to use updated template

Now that you’ve set the storage quota template for future sites, we need to update pre-existing sites to adopt this new storage limit. We’ll need to do this via PowerShell.

  1. Remote connect to a SharePoint server
  2. Open SharePoint 2013/2016 Management Shell as administrator (right-click, Run as Administrator)
  3. Run the following script, replacing the web app address with your own, and the template name if different from Personal Site
    $SPWebApp = Get-SPWebApplication https://mysites.MYORG.org

foreach ($SPSite in $SPWebApp.Sites)
{
    if ($SPSite -ne $null)
    {
        Set-SPSite -Identity $SPSite.url -QuotaTemplate "Personal Site"
        $SPSite.Dispose()
    }
}

And that’s it! Once that has run successfully, all of your MySites should now have the new limit in place.