SharePoint: How to Get the Error to Show on the SharePoint Site

1. Open the web.config of your web application. For me it's at c:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80\web.config


2. Search for “<customErrors”. Turn it off:

    <customerrors mode="Off" />

If you don't have a customErrors entry in your web.config, you can just add it. It is a child of system.web.

3. Search for “<compilation”. Set debug to true.

    <compilation batch="false" debug="true" optimizeCompilations="true">

4. Search for “<SafeMode” and set “CallStack” to "true.

<SafeMode MaxControls="200" CallStack="true" DirectFileDependencies="10" 

TotalFileDependencies="50" AllowPageLevelTrace="false">

Try to watch the logfiles, set logging level to maximum to be sure you see what SharePoint says about your page.

To do that, if you have access to the server:

• Open SharePoint Central Admin
• Go to Operations tab, select "Diagnostic logging"
• Select category 'All' and change the trace log level to 'Verbose', save changes
• Reset IIS server (for the purpose of a clean experiment)
• Open \\server\c$\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12 logs and order by modification date
• Try to load your webpage in /_layouts folder, see the error again
• Open the newest log file you can see and search for [MyCustomFolder] name