Sometimes I’m working on SharePoint sites I end up with some masterpages I don’t need anymore and want to delete these pages. Recently I also tried to delete a master page file from the “Master Page and Page Layout Gallery” in SharePoint 2007 and got the following error message: ”This item cannot be deleted because it is still referenced by other pages”
To work around this problem, mark the master file as hidden so that the master file does not appear as a selection when you create a new site. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Use an account that has administrative permissions to log on to the Web application that is hosted on the SharePoint Server 2007 server.
2. Click Site Actions, click Site Settings, and then click Modify All Site Settings.
3. Under Galleries, click Master Page and Page Layout Gallery.
4. Click the list next to the master file that you want to hide, and then click Edit Properties.
5. On the list next to Content Type, click Page Layout.
6. Click to select the check box next to Hidden Page, and then click OK.
7. Click the list next to the master file, and then click Check In.
8. On the Check In page, select the options that you want, and then click OK.
9. Click the list next to the master file, and then click Publish a Major Version.
10. On the Publish a Major Version page, enter a comment, and then click OK.
11. Click the list next to the master file, and then click Approve/reject.
12. Next to Approval Status, click Approved, and then click OK to approve the changes.
Now you can remove the masterpage, but not always is my experience. Some masterpages still gave me an error when I wanted to remove them. So I opened these masterpages in SharePoint Designer, removed all the code and saved them. After this action it was possible to delete the pages.
Tags: error
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