Turning on Detailed Error Messages in SharePoint 2010 - SharePoint ignoring value in the CustomErrors tag issue

This is not new but I found the situation in which the following recommended procedure won't work.

1. On the web server, navigate to the site directory (probably something like: C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80 )
2. Open the web.config file in Notepad
3. Search for the safemode node with the word "CallStack" and change the CallStack status to true
   <SafeMode MaxControls="200" CallStack="true" DirectFileDependencies="10" TotalFileDependencies="50" AllowPageLevelTrace="false">
4. Search for the CustomErrors node and set the mode to Off
   <customErrors mode="Off" />
5. Save and close.

So what to do if you update web.config and you still can't see detailed error messages?


The problem is that you're probably running into the error in the _layouts subfolder. In that case the solution is easy:

1. On the web server, navigate to the c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS folder
2. Open the web.config file in Notepad
3. Search for the CustomErrors node and set the mode to Off
   <customErrors mode="Off" />
4. Save and close.

Hope this helps,

David