While testing SharePoint 2010 SP1’s new "site deletion and restoring it from the recycle bin" functionality, I wanted to see what happens when I deleted a site, add a new site at the same location, and try to restore the deleted site.
Naturally, I got an error (as expected). But somehow it is the same error as when you try to restore a subsite to a no longer existing parent site (unexpected). For example, if you first delete the site company.com/finance/team, then company.com/finance, and lastly try to restore the company.com/finance/team site, this of course fails as the /finance site doesn’t exist. In my case, there is already a site at the specified location, so I would have expected a different error, something along the lines "Error – A site already exists at target location"
Anyway, here’s the error message:
Error
You must first restore the original parent site in order to restore the site "Delete Me".
Troubleshoot issues with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation.
Correlation ID: b697943f-829b-4f40-9a65-98fec223f697
Date and Time: 6/30/2011 10:25:27 PM
Go back to site
I also decided to get more details about the error with the help of Powershell and the Correlation ID:
get-splogevent | ?{$_.Correlation -eq "b697943f-829b-4f40-9a65-98fec223f697"} | select Area, Category, Level, EventID, Message | Format-List
Didn’t provide me with more details actually.
So the lesson to be learned from all this: In case you get this error and you wonder why, as you are 100% sure that the to be restore site’s parent site exists, just make sure that there isn’t already another site in place in the same location.