This page is not using a valid page layout – how to fix

This post describes an issue when trying to view classic publishing pages in SharePoint Online and how to resolve.

The issue

After migrating publishing sites from SharePoint 2010 – SharePoint Online, I encountered an issue with classic SharePoint Server publishing pages. Post-migration, some publishing pages wouldn’t open and displayed this error message:

Fix publishing pages with custom page layouts created from template - HANDS ON SharePoint — Now another issue with this was that quite often the publishing pages affected were the migrated sites’ homepage – rendering the whole site inoperable! Microsoft have an article on the issue here and state that the cause is that *“The .aspx page is using an invalid page layout, or the current layout is corrupt”*.

Resolution

The Microsoft documentation on how to resolve this is pretty good, but I found it didn’t quite get me to fix my issue. Here’s what I did:

Navigate to Site Content & Structure: /_layouts/sitemanager.aspx. NOTE: You need to be a SharePoint admin to access
Open the Pages library > find your broken page > click on the drop-down button and press edit page settings

Select the (Welcome Page) Blank Web Part Page layout

Press OK

When I had to do this for my broken pages, there was a warning message above the page layout that said “Current page layout is not valid. Please select a valid page layout from the drop down list below”. I just selected the (Welcome Page) Blank Web Part Page layout anyway, pressed OK and it worked.