I had been seeing this error time and again after recycling the app pool on one of my development boxes. After some digging online, it looks as though this is a bug that has snuck into the RTM release of SharePoint 2010. The TaxonomyPicker class does not exist within the SharePoint assembly, but the file is still in the control templates directory. So every time I recycle the app pool of my SharePoint web app, it tries to load the control and fails with a type exception.

Error

Load control template file /_controltemplates/TaxonomyPicker_broken.ascx failed: Could not load type ‘Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.TaxonomyPicker’ from assembly ‘Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c’.

The Fix…

To fix the issue with the error being logged in the Events Log do the following.

1. Navigate to the controltemplates directory in the 14 hive (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14)
2. Rename TaxonomyPicker.ascx to TaxonomyPicker.broken (or remove it completely since it is never used).
3. Recycle the app pool for the SharePoint Web Application.

After the app pool recycles the control will no longer be loaded when the site initializes and you won’t be seeing the error within the event log any longer.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 8th, 2011 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Development, SharePoint. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.