How to Turn User Friendly Error Message off in Sharepoint 2007 / MOSS

By Default SharePoint will not show the detail error message and rather just give a user friendly error message. (see picture )

As a developer though, you need to know the detail error log to be able to track it down. To turn off "User friendly Error Message" in SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) follow these steps:

1. Open the web.config file for your site ( you can find it under inetpub folder e.g. C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories )


2. In the web.config file, search for the tag "CallStack=", locate the tag and change it from CallStack="false" to CallStack="true".


3. In the web.config file, search for the tag and change "On" to "Off".


4. Save the changes and close web.config.


5. next time you test your page, you will see the actual error (see below)

Happy coding :)