Today I’ll notify you about an issue I recently discovered when you delete the user property SPS-Local (Office location) in SharePoint 2010 which breaks then the My Profile page!
Action:
You have User profile service application provisioned and a running user profile import connection. The My Sites are setup and in use by your users.
1. Go to the my sites host location (i.e. http://ServerName/My ) and click “My Profile” in the top bar –> This will create a profile page if not existing yet
2. Go to [Application management -manage service applications – user profile service application – manage user properties]
3. in property section “Contact information”, select “Office Location” and delete it.
Result:
Go back to the “My Profile” page, refresh and you’ll get an error (in web.config the customErrors mode are set to “off” and callstack =”true”)
Cause:
The property “Office location” (Name: SPS-Local) is a default property and is checked on rendering the My Profile page. If this property does not exist, the page will fail and throwing the error that the property is missing.
Unfortunately you cannot recreate this property because it is prevented by the code to create a property with the name beginning with “SPS-…”.
Resolution:
The only way to recreate a default property you accidentally deleted is:
a) you restore the profile databases from the last known good backup the property still exists in or
b) you recreate the complete User Profile service application because only on new creation of the profile databases, these properties will be created by the process.
Even that you can delete a property, it is not recommended to do so although you may not need it! As seen above, SharePoint does! So if you don’t need or use a property (especially one of the default properties) just edit the property and uncheck the applicable options to make it invisible.
I know that you’ll maybe say now,
Question: well why does SharePoint allow the deletion of this property when it is required and checked by code?
Answer: we did not experienced this behavior yet and it was not tested before as we did not expected the deletion of a default property.
A request for fix was rejected recently but we reported this misbehavior to the Product team internally to make them aware of.
A fix is not available and therefore this behavior is “by design” but it is considered maybe to build a fix, included soonest into SP2.
Stay tuned for latest news!
Other Related posts:
User profile sync – SharePoint 2010
Troubleshooting User Profile Sync Issues on SharePoint 2010
SharePoint mysteries and more... 
to: Greg @ Scripps
Hi, I have sent an email to the current case owner with some more info. AFAIK, they already offered you the supported ways but seems none of them are suitable for you…
Hope they can make it for you but I think the only way is really restore from backup or recreate the UPA as the SPS-prefixed properties are only set once on creation time of the UPA databases.
sorry for no better news,
kind regards, Steve
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Thanks for the reply Steve. my # is 113100910849969. I had already pasted your blog in the ticket comments when I lodged the original. 🙂 I'm so sad. And, what is even sadder to me – is that I even tried miisclient.exe and, darn if that tool doesn't see the SPS-HireDate … i mean, it's nowhere in there. My SPS-HireDate is in UAT, but, as I typically test and develop in PROD, my PROD is where it's missing now. 🙂 I can't even find an 'unsupported' way to get it back. I'll re-refer tech to the blog when I speak to him/her. From your title, i'll probably be SOL on this one.
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So, tell me this – as I just opened a premier support case bacause I mapped the SPS-HireDate , populated it – and then needed it to go away. I 'unmapped' the SPS-HireDate – and did the expected 4 full UPA syncs – and the info would not go away from the FIMS profile. I was sipmly unable to make the SPS-Hiredate disappear, so, natually, I said "Self, just delete it and recreate it , that'll do it." Sure did, but problem is that I can't get it back, obviously. I am also unable to recreate the UPA because it breaks NewsGator etc. Seriously, this is really stupid that I am allowed to delete something but I can't put it back. In this instance, there needs to be more warning info about this limitation in the product. Any updates?
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Hi Greg,
I'm very sorry to hear that. AS stated above, all properties prefixed with "SPS…" are Default properties that are spwaned on creating the UPA and its databases.
Once you delete such a property it cannot be added/recreated back again sinc our code prevents it.
You're right that we should have a warning or so on deletion but even with the SP2 Triage, the PG did not fix it yet.
If you have another premier Case running for the failing recreation, please point the engineer to my blog here and I'll be happy to provide all "BUG specific" Information to him internally. Maybe this will Help to get more attraction at PG side to fix it.
So I fear you only have to follow my post if you want to have the Default SPS-prefixed property back. else ist gone forever and cannot be recreated else in a supported way.
Please encourage your Support engineer to get in contact with me for any further info.
Thanks and good luck,
cheers – Steve 😉
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