*TIPS & TRICKS* Accessing “Hidden” SharePoint Settings Pages

Microsoft recently released their new “Communication” sites, which are available for selection when using the self-service site creation option via SharePoint Home (clicking “Create Site” on the page where you view sites you’re following, recently accessed, etc.).

Unlike most other site templates, you’re NOT able to activate the site collection-level ‘SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure’ feature within a Communication site, which provide useful additions such as dynamic navigation and the Content & Structure page.

The lack of navigation options isn’t a big deal, because Communication sites only come with a top link bar, and are not likely to have a huge number of sub-sites, but not being able to access Content & Structure can be frustrating if you need to move sub-sites around, or easily move content from one list or library to another.

Even through this option only becomes available on the Site Settings page once you activate the Publishing Infrastructure feature, you can still access it by simply appending “_layouts/15/sitemanager.aspx” at the end of the site’s URL.

E.g. https://[your tenant or web app]/sites/comms/_layouts/15/sitemanager.aspx

The same trick can be used to access the page which allows you to save a site as a template (_layouts/15/savetmpl.aspx), as this option disappears from the Site Settings once you have activated the Publishing Infrastructure feature.

You can also specify which site templates can be used when creating sub-sites below any type of parent site (_layouts/15/areatemplatesettings.aspx), even though the Page Layouts & Site Templates option only appears on the Site Settings page of publishing sites.

There’s plenty of other examples of this same trick available, so if you’re able to access a page from one site’s settings but not another, simply copy and paste the last part of the URL across!

You can find more tips and tricks on the 3grow Yammer Network, so feel free to join if you’re a Yammer user!