Tool to find the error message related to Correlation ID in SharePoint 2010

In SharePoint 2010 whenever you face an error, SharePoint will display a web page with a plain error message. That is "An unexpected error has occurred." and a Correlation ID.

An unexpected error has occurred

So have you ever wondered what is "Correlation ID" and I am pretty sure that Correlation ID will not make any sense to you.

So what is this Correlation ID? In SharePoint 2010, you get a Correlation ID (which is a GUID) attached to your logs/error messages when something happens. This ID can then be used to look up that specific error from the logs.

This Correlation ID is used per request-session in SharePoint 2010, and if you are in the process of requesting some information from SharePoint and bump into some problems along the way – your Correlation ID will be the best starting point for searching for what went wrong along that request.

With the help of SharePoint 2010 Management Shell, you can examine that specific Correlation ID and find out more information about it. Since I hate to open Management Shell and run some scripts every time I ran into these type of errors, I thought of writing a simple tool which will present me the error message details when I entered a Correlation ID.

Error Message From Correlation ID

What I did was pretty simple. I have created an simple Windows Application which will invoke the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell, run the script with a given Correlation ID and return the output. It's that much easy.

You all can try this simple tool your self.
     free download

We always develop tools for others and why not develop tools for our selves to make our life easy. Appreciate your feedback.

Happy Coding.

Regards,
Jaliya