Exception: The content type is in use

Scott — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:53:14 +0000

I’ve found that working with InfoPath is becoming more and more of a chore. A form I’ve been working on has had its promoted columns changed a number of times (Side note: I would just love to have a defined specification).

Today when I attempted to completely retract my form (inlcuding manually deleting the content type associated with the form), I was presented with the always helpful error “The content type is in use“. This is by far one of the more helpful errors you will ever see from SharePoint. Unfortunately it isn’t clear how to discover where the content type is actually in use. A quick trip to the content database for the site collection you are working in can show us:

DECLARE @ContentTypeName nvarchar(128)

SET @ContentTypeName='Content Type Name Here'

SELECT w.Title AS [Web Site], w.FullUrl AS [Web Url], al.tp_Title AS [List Title],
	ct2.*
FROM ContentTypes ct1
	JOIN ContentTypes ct2 ON LEFT(ct2.ContentTypeId, Len(ct1.ContentTypeId))=ct1.ContentTypeId
	LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.ContentTypeUsage ctu ON LEFT(ctu.ContentTypeId, Len(ct2.ContentTypeId)) = ct2.ContentTypeId
	LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.AllLists al ON ctu.ListId = al.tp_Id AND ctu.WebId=al.tp_WebId
	LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.Webs w ON al.tp_WebId = w.Id WHERE ct1.ResourceDir=@ContentTypeName

[Credit to Curtis Ruppe]

Once we know where the content type is in use, deleting it through the GUI is a trivial matter.

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Exception: The content type is in use