How to locate your SharePoint web.config file

Although you can search your file system for all of the web.config files, when you need to modify something specific, low-level in SharePoint, it’s best to find the right one, first. 🙂

So, because I’ve asked this several times before, I figured I’d show the quickest way to locate your SharePoint sites web.config file (note, you may have several websites, pointing to the same SharePoint collection/database through Alternate Access Mappings, so it is important to select the right one based on the URL you want to modify).

1. Open IIS (in this example, I’m assuming you are on Windows Server 2003.  Select the appropriate website.  You’ll notice the web.config file is immediately visible.

2. From here, there are 2 quick ways to get to your web.config file

a) Simply select your site and click ‘open’

or…

b) Choose the properties of the website and go to the ‘Home Directory’ tab.  The location of your web.config file will be in the root of the path specified under ‘Local Path’

Always proceed with caution and Always make a backup first. Happy SharePoint’n.