How to resolve “SharePoint Foundation Error” While Opening Documents inside SharePoint?

Receiving “SharePoint Foundation Error” message each time when tries to open documents inside SharePoint? Well to fix this error or issue this post will surely going to help you. The error referred above can be in one of the following form: 

• Edit Document' requires a window SharePoint service compatible application.

• The document could not be opened for editing. A Microsoft SharePoint Foundation compatible application couldn’t be found to edit the document.

• To open this workbook, it is compulsory that your computer must be running a supported version of Microsoft Office application and a browser that well support opening files directly from the office webs apps.

Reasons behind this SharePoint Foundation Error:

The issue is result of more than one office version on a local machine. Though it doesn’t affect the complete suite for instance office 2013 and Lync 2013 installed together but rather than this when you install Visio 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013 and Lync 2013, different year suits or even parts of different year suits get installed on your local machine and cause this kind of errors.

This error can also occur when you have many different version of the OWSSUPP DLL available and not properly registered. This .dll file links to your sharepoint OpenDocument Class internet explorer Add-On and it is an integrated ADD-ON for opening documents from SharePoint.

Also read: How to Repair “Cannot complete this action” error?

Steps To Resolve SharePoint Foundation Error:

To fix this issue, you have to disable Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Support in some other versions of office and after that instantly fix office. However below mentioned steps are surely going to help you in this. Follow these steps to uninstall ‘Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Support’ for all versions:

For Windows XP:

• Go to the Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs
• The application which are installed and are not the current versions should be removed. Just choose the item and hit on change, select add and after that click on continue.
• At the time of installation, expand office tools and click on Windows SharePoint service support or Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Support, then click on not available and then continue. This should be done for all office programs which are not office 2010
• After that configuration is complete, click office 2010 in add/remove programs, then change, select repair and at last click on continue.

For Vista/Windows 7

• First go to control panel, then programs and then uninstall a program
• For almost every program which is not office 2010 program, select any one and hit on change, select add or remove and then hit on continue.
• Now go to installation option and the on expand office tools, click on windows SharePoint service support or Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Support, select not available and then on continue. This should be done for all office programs which are not office 2010
• After the configuration is complete, hit on programs in office 2010 and then on change, select repair and at last click on continue.

Alternative Option To Resolve “SharePoint Foundation Error”

However fixing this error manually is not the permanent solution nor that easy to fix and it should not be used also unless one is expert in the field. So it’s better to use third party tool that repairs the corruption but also easy to operate. For such cases SharePoint Server Repair Tool is the most appropriate choice as it is mainly designed to fix any type of corruption in SharePoint database. It can easily retrieve all data and documents from any corrupted database. Along with that it performs quick SharePoint repair and restore all essential database related to particular web application along with the site collections. Using this tool, users can extract database items like indexes, tables, media files, documents, labels and some other files from inaccessible MDF files.