WSS / MOSS File Upload Size and Timeout Issue (Server 2008 & IIS 7)

http://donpistulka.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!1351C78C5D7326F4!1010.entry
(I got this article from here but I always had to search for it. I thought it would be easier to find if I put it on my own blog).

If you need to increase the maximum file upload size on your SharePoint site the first place you'll probably check is Central Administration. There's a Maximum Upload Size setting right there. You're thinking, "Great. This is going to be easier than I thought." You bump it up to 100MB and you're ready to go.

The problem is that it doesn't seem to do anything. You still get an error whenever any file over 28MB's is uploaded even if you changed this setting in the web app settings all the way up to 2GB's.  The security built into 2008 is at fault here.  When you make the changes in the web app settings they do not get transferred to the web.config file automatically.  So you must manually update the web.config file for all web apps needing this change and update the web.config file in the 12 hive as well. You have to increase the file size limit as well as the time out settings to accommodate for the larger file sizes.

In the 12 hive we need this change.  This is the web.config file in the templates gallery.

Change the web.config file for all web apps that need the larger file size upload.

This will stop the time out problem.

Now for the file size:

On a Windows Server 2008 computer that has IIS 7.0-only installations, you add the maxAllowedContentLength value. When you are running Windows SharePoint Services on a Windows Server 2008-based computer that has IIS 7.0, you find that you cannot upload files that are larger than 28 MB even though you have configured the large file upload settings. Usually, the error that users see is "The page cannot be displayed." In some circumstances, users may also see an "HTTP 404" error.

To work around this problem, set in the Web.config file for the Web application to have following settings under the <configuration> section:

• Use Notepad to open the Web application Web.config file. By default, this file is in the following folder:

  Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\VirtualDirectoryFolder

• Add the following settings under the <configuration> section of the Web.config file:

  <system.webServer>
  <security>
  <requestFiltering>
  <requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="52428800"/>
  </requestFiltering>
  </security>
  </system.webServer>

Note maxAllowedContentLength="52428800" in bytes has to match the size of file that you are trying to upload. Also, when you set the number, increase it slightly beyond the maximum file upload size that you have configured in SharePoint. If the number is equal to or less, users will not receive the error message that they are exceeding the size limit if they try to upload a file size larger than that specified by the administrator.

 Place the above code at the bottom just before the close out of the configuration section like this:

You should now be able to upload your larger files.