SharePoint 2010: The content type is in use

When trying to delete a content type within SharePoint you can receive the following error:

Obviously it is telling you that you can’t delete the content type as it is being used somewhere within your site.  The question is where is the content type being used.

When I have been faced with this I have used a couple of different methods to find out.

SharePoint Manager

SharePoint Manager is a tool that you can download here from CodePlex.  It allows you to explore various objects within your SharePoint farm,  including content types and their usages.

SharePoint Manager is a useful tool, however,  in some instances it will indicate that the content type has no current usages but you will still receive the above error message.2.

SQL

The following SQL can be used in instances where SharePoint Manager indicates that the content type is not being used.

SELECT WebId, AW.FullUrl, ListId, AL.tp_Title
FROM ContentTypeUsage As CTU
     INNER JOIN AllWebs As AW On CTU.WebId = AW.ID
     INNER JOIN AllLists As AL ON AL.tp_ID = CTU.ListId
WHERE (sys.fn_varbintohexstr(ContentTypeId) LIKE '[ContentTypeID]%')

You can replace [ContentTypeID] with the content type id within the URL when click on content type within SharePoint:

SharePoint 2010: Manage services on server link missing

Within central administration I was looking for the “Manage services on server” link within:

Central Administration –> System Settings

However,  it was missing!!!

It turns out that you need to run Internet Explorer in administrator mode to see this link

SharePoint 2010: The search request was unable to connect to the Search Service

After recreating the search service application within central administration and starting a crawl of the my data sources any subsequent searches within SharePoint resulted in:

“The search request was unable to connect to the Search Service”

The reason for this turned out to be that the SharePoint site was not associated with the new Search Service Application.

You can associate the site with a Search Service Application through:

Central Administration –> Application Management –> Manage web applications

If you then click on the web application that you are trying to perform searches on and click:

This will provide you with a list of all the different service applications available to you site:

Once the search service application was associated with the site the search function as expected.