Sharepoint 2010 “Failed to render field Created_x0020_Date, use default value instead”

Question

Our company recently upgraded from Sharepoint 2007 to 2010 and with the upgrade it managed to break a filter on one of our sites.

The site is mostly just a dressed up document library with a custom view and has a date filter (by year, month). After the upgrade it randomly generates an error of "Unable to display this Web Part. To troubleshoot the problem, open this Web page in a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation-compatible HTML editor such as Microsoft SharePoint Designer. If the problem persists, contact your Web server administrator." along with a correleation ID. The logs generated on the sharepoint server state "Failed to render field Created_x0020_Date, use default value instead".

The problem does not appear to be with the query or with the returned results until it actually tries to display the web part. Somehow the created date is not getting set? The strange thing is it works intermittently. The web part loads correctly maybe 5% of the time.

Any ideas what could have changed from 2007 to 2010?

Answer 1

Was the "Created_x0020_Date" column a calculated column? Was it modified in any way (such as the current date XSL hack)?

I've seen that sporadic error before and for my problem it was a time-out issue with a poor performing web part pulling from 3 different lists. We increased list throttling, and caching but it didn't help. But if it's just a standard view of the library with no custom XSL in it, then it isn't a code performance issue.

Can't you just create a new created column and copy the old data into the new column using Datasheet view in the browser?

Answer 2

We faced this same error both in a SharePoint 2010 and a SharePoint 2013 enviroment, when executing an old report.

The cause was the farm XsltTransformTimeOut parameter.

We increased its value (default is 1 second) to 20 (our report lasted 10 seconds to run) and it got ok!

$farm = Get-SPFarm 
$farm.XsltTransformTimeOut = 20 
$farm.Update()

Hope it helps!

Answer 3

There whatsoever no difference between the Created Date column in SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2007.

The differences between the two are mainly new columns. After doing some digging I found this.

You can see the complete reference of the fields here

• SharePoint 2010 Document Library Column Reference
• SharePoint 2007 Document Library Column Reference
• SharePoint 2007 2010 Document Library Column Difference

Now, since we know pretty much nothing of your setup and how this is built we are left to chance a bit. But assuming that guessing a bit is alright I'd say you are either missing the data in the 'Created Date' field which is possible since the field isn't required (check the documents I've linked to). Did you verify that all documents got this value set?

This field (Created Date) use the TimeCreated property to check when the document was created. So if this column isn't filled with data that usually should mean that your documents hasn't been transfered to your new installation but the reference to the document is still there.

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spfile.timecreated.aspx

Thats a bit of a chance but thats what I'd start somewhere around that.

Good luck.