Friday 24 March 2017

Troubleshoot PowerShell Add-Type Load Error [Tip]

In the last couple of days I am working with a client that has a DMS solution based on SharePoint Server 2010. We inherited the solution so it has it's specifics. One of those little things (that make life exciting) is that they have fields with custom data types. 
I had to do a powershell script that will edit some document metadata. I had to update standard SharePoint native data type fields, but after updating the item in powershell I lost the values of the custom data type fields. I realized that I need the custom data type loaded in the powershell session. So I started to import some DLLs, in the order that I thought it makes sense as we do not have the source code of the solutions.This was fine until I received the error below:

Add-Type : Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information.

This error is completely generic and the only useful thing is that it tells us where we can find more useful information.
This simple error handling script turned out to be life saver for me as it showed exactly what the load error is and which dependent assembly I need to load first :)


The nice blue text is our LoaderExceptions property of the exception. I hope that you find it useful!
LoaderExceptions Powershell