I've been a bit quiet on the blog lately as I've been trying to finish up several exciting things.  One of them is an updated version of the SharePoint ULS Log Viewer.

The original post about the ULSViewer.

The key benefit of using the viewer is that you do *not* need access to the SharePoint server.  Great for when clients send log files.

The new version has some really simple but useful new features:

• Sort on any column by clicking column header (ascending or descending)
• Ability to open and concatenate multiple log files (select multiple from open dialog)
• Ability to automatically browse the default log directory (When running on a SharePoint server)
• Full Text Search (of log Message, Category, and Process AND combined with other filters)

You can Download It Here from CodePlex

Sorting through the SharePoint ULS log files is tedious at best.  There has been significant progress is adding support to SharePoint Central Administration for viewing these logs with the SharePoint Log Viewer.

However, as a consultant, I'm constantly receiving logs from remote farms to aid in tracking down problems with an installation.  In this scenario it isn't particularly helpful to have a viewer inside SharePoint because I have no access to the farm.

Thus, this evening I created the SharePoint ULS Viewer.

This is a simple WPF application powered by LINQ which makes working with SharePoint log files *much* easier than traditional 'notepad' strategies.

The application supports filtering by severity, process and category.  It will also (cleverly) detect 'overflow' stack traces which have crossed over multiple lines and reconstruct these as single entries which are much easier to read.

Find the CodePlex Project with a download of the binary and source here.

I'll be looking forward to feedback and be adding the most requested features to my next iteration.