How to fix "Access denied" errors when running "Set-PnPAvailablePageLayouts"?

This post was most recently updated on March 25th, 2023.

< 1 min read.

This article describes one way how to fix seemingly non-sensical “Access denied” errors, that you get when running Set-PnPAvailablePageLayouts.

Problem

Table of Contents

While running the PnP cmdlet for enabling or selecting the available publishing page layouts for a web, you run into this, fairly generic error: Access denied. You do not have permission to perform this action or access this resource.

PS C:\> Set-PnPAvailablePageLayouts -AllowAllPageLayouts
Set-PnPAvailablePageLayouts : Access denied. You do not have permission to perform this action or access this resource.
At line:1 char:1
+ Set-PnPAvailablePageLayouts -AllowAllPageLayouts
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (:) [Set-PnPAvailablePageLayouts], ServerUnauthorizedAccessException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : EXCEPTION,SharePointPnP.PowerShell.Commands.Publishing.SetAvailablePageLayouts

This error is thrown on some sites, but not all. This happens despite you having global administrator permissions on the tenant.

What gives?

Solution

The reason for this is actually kind of an old friend of ours. Enabling different layouts actually requires custom scripts to be enabled for your site!

Hence, this ended up being another easy and kind of obvious one.

The error message wasn’t very informative, but it went away after enabling custom scripts. So, with any luck, you’ll just need to enable Custom Scripts on the site – see this article for instructions:

5 ways to enable Custom Scripts for a SharePoint site collection

Did it help? It sure did for me 😉

Author
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Antti K. Koskela

Developer / Speaker / Consultant at Koskila / Precio Fishbone / Norppandalotti Software Co / Alter - Experience Ideas Ltd

Antti Koskela is a proud digital native nomadic millennial full stack developer (is that enough funny buzzwords? That's definitely enough funny buzzwords!), who works as Solutions Architect for Precio Fishbone, building delightful Digital Workplaces.

He's been a developer from 2004 (starting with PHP and Java), and he's been working on .NET projects, Azure, Office 365, SharePoint and a lot of other stuff. He's also Microsoft MVP for Azure.

This is his personal professional (e.g. professional, but definitely personal) blog.

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