"List does not exist" error message

Recently, when I went to view a list I ran into the following error message:

Silly Microsoft! My list isn’t deleted, I see it right here in my site contents. After brushing off the error message as totally missing the mark and unhelpful, I went to my go-to troubleshooting tool to find some helpful answers: Google. After some research it seemed that the culprit may be in the view configuration.

I noted that the list had a couple dozen different views. I went through each view and discovered that 2 of the views worked properly (more evidence that something was probably wrong with the view configuration).

This is how I went about troubleshooting the problem:

1. I made a duplicate of one of the views that did not work.
2. Then I systematically removed each column one by one from the display and tested the view until the view worked

The offending column was the following lookup column:

The “BP Room #” column was referencing a list that had been deleted. Next I investigated how to reconnect a list to a lookup column and discovered it wouldn’t be easy. I learned that the lookup column is connected by several properties:

1. WebID – This is the web location where the list is stored
2. ListID – This is the source list where the information comes from
3. ShowField – This is the field from the source list that is displayed

Once the lookup list is deleted, these properties are broken. In order to maintain the lookup field integrity, it makes sense there would be no way to (easily) repair the lookup connection. I did find a Powershell command here, but I don’t have farm access so this wasn’t an option. It looked like my only choice was to create a new lookup column. In my case this happened to a list with over 10,000 records, so there was extra work involved to make the list right again. Hopefully this won’t be a problem in your scenario.

Other Insights

I was thinking about the “List does not exist” error message I received and realized the message was referring to the missing lookup list. Mea culpa! Forgive me Microsoft! 

by Darrell Houghton via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community