Can't Activate SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure for Site Collection

Copper Contributor

I'm trying to change the default font size for our Site Collection, specifically Wiki text and I found this useful post on this forum:  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint/How-do-I-change-the-default-font-size-for-wiki-pag...

 

We're using O365 SharePoint and a Modern UI for our Site Collection, and eventually I was able to navigate to Site Settings > Site Collection Features.  When I try to Activate SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure, it fails giving a Technical error.

 

I'm trying to activate this feature so I can get access to the Master Pages and change the default CSS for our Wiki Site.  I can see on our older Intranet Site Collection with the legacy UI that this Master Pages feature is available.

 

Any ideas?  Thanks!

8 Replies

You are unable to do this for various reasons, the first being that scripting is disabled in the Modern UI. It is not recommended to enable publishing in Modern for multiple reasons, one being that Modern UI doesn't support MasterPages/page layouts.

I would think about avoiding mixing classic ui and modern ui, as it is going to give your end users a very  inconsistent experience navigating between modern and classic pages. I would think about seeing if you can create similar functionality in Modern without using classic. If you cannot, I would create a classic SharePoint site instead for the wiki purposes.

Thanks for the reply.

 

We are simply trying to change the default text size for a web part.  There doesn't seem to be any easy way to do this as a user must configure the text size each time for each new web part.

 

I appreciate the confirmation that publishing is not enabled in the Modern UI.  

 

 

@Beau Cameron 

I don't understand you properly. I am using a classic version of the SharePoint Site and having the same technical issue, any suggestions.

cheers

@Pratibha_vinayak Your issue may be unrelated, since you are in a classic site collection. I'm not sure what your issue may be.

@Beau Cameron 

Thanks for replying. I just attached the detail of error if you can find something.

details:

 

@Beau Cameron  "I would think about avoiding mixing classic ui and modern ui, " - If only Msft had thought about that -  because the "modern" ui is just a cosmetic skin, layered over the same old underlying functionality, most "system" pages are still in classic mode. It gives the product an amateurish feel and confuses my users to no end.

Even worse, blocking things like activating publishing features means we're stuck with a hybrid service that lacks much of the functionality we've grown used to. Until Msft truly modernizes the whole platform, and gives us back some of the functionality that has been removed or blocked in modern, Sharepoint really is far less useful than it used to be.  

I hear what you are saying, and I understand that. Don't expect to get all the same features you had before, like publishing. Curious what other features you miss using that do not exist in modern.

@Beau Cameron The list of missing features is long, but I could live with that if the platform had been truly "modernized" from the ground up instead of just being given a "facelift".  It's the worst of both worlds because we all know the classic functionality is still there - users constantly bounce between classic and modern pages - but Msft has rigged it so the "modern" ui just makes it harder to get to familiar features and use them.  

I now spend more time trying to wrangle with hidden features that I know are there, than I ever did customizing classic - which defeats Msft's stated purpose of reducing the need for customization in modern.