Since installing the “Fab 40” templates from Microsoft, the export command has been broken for the Portal site. (stsadm -o export -url http://site -filename export). This is majorly annoying because export is the only way to migrate sites from one server to another. Without it, we were having major problems getting sites to the test…

Since installing the “Fab 40” templates from Microsoft, the export command has been broken for the Portal site. (stsadm -o export -url http://site -filename export).

This is majorly annoying because export is the only way to migrate sites from one server to another. Without it, we were having major problems getting sites to the test server so D could safely play with them.

I did some searching on the error that popped up: Guid should contain 32 digits with 4 dashes and eventually found this site.

The fix was to edit a file called fields.xml located in c:program filescommon filesmicrosoft sharedweb server extensions12templatefeaturestsatypes. It appears that the Fab 40 templates add several hundred entries to this file, but screw up the GUID, framing them with {}. The fix is to remove the brackets. I backed up the file on Apps –this would limit the impact if my fix broke the server and I had to restore the backed up file. I then manually removed the brackets. Once that was done, I crossed my fingers and restarted IIS. The server came online, and export works again! I then made the change to Web1 and Web2. This time I used find and replace rather than edit the file by hand. All seems to be well.