Forum Discussion
SharePoint Online - Issues Saving Site as Template and Activating .wsp Solutions
Hello everyone,
Recently I have been experiencing issues when saving a SharePoint site as a template and activating .wsp files within the Solution Gallery. This appears to be a recent change, as the same process and templates have worked successfully in the past.
I wanted to see whether anyone else has recently experienced issues with SharePoint site templates (.wsp) in SharePoint Online.
Findings:
- Site type is a Classic Team Site.
- Custom Script is enabled (DenyAddAndCustomizePages = Disabled).
- The .wsp file is successfully generated and appears in the Solution Gallery.
- The .wsp file does not activate.
- Activation fails with the error:
- "Activation of solutions with sandboxed code has been disabled." - Prior to this, SharePoint was only displaying a generic "Sorry, something went wrong" error. (All I did was turn content approval on and off in the Solution Gallery Library)
- Previously working .wsp files also fail to activate.
- The behaviour has been reproduced across multiple Microsoft 365 tenants.
- A Microsoft support ticket has already been raised.
Has anyone else encountered this behaviour recently, or is aware of any changes affecting .wsp template activation in SharePoint Online?
Thank you in advance for any insight or suggestions.
19 Replies
MS indicate that manually editing the templae to remove the feature references should work. We had already treid that and coundlt get it to work, however it is a fiddly and error prone process. We have tried multiple times with variations on the procedure btu still no resolution.
In our case, in all our Project Online instances, we had to rebuild the Project Site template from scratch.
The possible reason was a Web feature enabled in the previous Project Site template: Workflows can use app permissions.
We could not disable it either via web interface neither via PowerShell and we believe this is a leftover from the recent decommissioning of the Classic Wotkflows in early April this year.
Update: On June 19, I tried creating a site from a custom template that had been working just fine a few weeks back but got the error saying "problem applying template" On the same day, I allowed custom script on the site and then tried to recreate the template (using /_layouts/15/savetmpl.aspx) to see if that might fix it. Saving a site as a template failed by taking me to a page that said access denied.
Today, I tried saving a site as a template again and it worked. I then was able to create a new site based off the custom template. I am not sure what happened but I can tell you that all of my old custom templates are useless now. If you still have access to the source site you used to create the custom templates, you may want to try saving them as templates again and go from there.
Good luck everyone!
Hi, did you use the same /_layouts/15/savetmpl.aspx to do this and it worked? I have been researching the issue and it seems they are turning this off as they no longer want sub sites, and instead want everything to be a site collection. The PNP Site provisioning they offer is exactly that, no sub site just site collection. It is frustrating as it has literally undone all the work I have been doing for the last 2 years with a team in work.
I have tried resaving the templates but get an access denied message.
yes i used the savetmpl.aspx - make sure that you go to the SP admin center and allow scripting for the top level site before you save as template. Maybe even give it an hour or so after you turn on scripting to make sure it activates. Good luck!
Yes, this started happening for me at the same time as the rest of us. Today is June 22 and I just tried to create a new site using the custom template based of wsp and It is still not working. Additionally, I cannot create any new templates using the ..._layouts/15/savetmpl.aspx url. I fear they may be shutting this entire process down. However, it would be nice if they would actually let us know that is what's happening so we can truly investigate alternatives. I saw some people in other comments say it started working for them. Is it still working? Can you create new templates using .../_layouts/15/savetmpl.aspx?
MS support have just come back to me and say they "can't recreate the error". 🤯 MS Support is completly inadequate.
Hi, just adding on to this post. Yesterday this started happening and now nobody can create a site from the site templates I set up 3 years ago.
Has anyone else come across this?
I came across similar issue. I noticed Microsoft upgraded the Site Collection/Site to latest version. The upgrade left the template behind. The versions of BizAppSiteTemplates and AccSrvSolutionGallery are out of synch and this is what caused the message above.
The solution is to recreate the Template. Go the Site you used to create the template originally. In the url, add suffix to site url: /_layouts/15/savetmpl.aspx. The template page opens and you can then proceed with recreating the template.
Try to create a site again pointing at your newly created template. You can also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93pVkdk1FzA
Same here. Reported it to MS
Still not working here...
The issue seems to have been resolved as of my latest check.
Thank you very much for your reply! I as well tested just now, and it seems to be working. I'll continue testing in the other tenancies.
I’m experiencing the same issue as well.
I’m currently contacting Microsoft Support regarding this.Same situation here....
We have the same issue across multiple tenants. As far as we can tell the last time this feature worked was about 5 days ago, we've opened a ticket with MS and await a response.
As usual the helpdesk was utterly incompetant and it felt like dealing with Mr Bean or being in a Monty Python sketch, just to get them working on it. Finally aftare complaining and escalating they seem to be taking it seriously.
As an aside, I've never in all my decades in a MS Partner heard my collegues slating MS so hard. Everyone is totally fed up and wishing to retire or do something else. The quality of the SW seems to have fallen dramatically, no testing, no decent documentation, things that work one day, dont work the next, services are slow and unresponsive, "Maker" experiences are terrible and slow to the point of being infuruating. Never thought the day would come when I would despise MS. "En****ification" has arrived.
