What’s SharePoint ULS Viewer?

SharePoint ULS Viewer is a Windows application that provides a simplified view of ULS log files in SharePoint 2010/2013/2016. It supports filtering, highlighting, sorting, append, and more features.

---

Why you need to use SharePoint ULS Viewer?

By default, the SharePoint trace logs are opened using Notepad, that actually difficult to read and traced!

The SharePoint ULS Viewer will help you to read and review your SharePoint issues carefully and quickly!

Note: the SharePoint ULS Viewer doesn’t read the Event Viewer Log

---

SharePoint ULS Viewer Features

Filtering In SharePoint ULS Viewer

You can easily filter your logs by the following fields

You can also filter by the log entry priority

• High.
• Medium.
• Verbose.

Append from SharePoint Log File in SharePoint ULS Viewer

On the current retrieved log file, you can append another log files.

Formatting Rule in SharePoint ULS Viewer

You can easily format the rules to be easily readable

Also, you can change the displayed columns and clear formatting as you prefer.

Manage Notifications in SharePoint ULS Viewer

Edit Menu in SharePoint ULS Viewer

Plus the above features, you can find the common Edit functionalities in Edit menu

---

How to read multiple SharePoint farm logs using SharePoint ULS Viewer?

You should first merge the SharePoint logs files using PowerShell,

 Merge-SPLogFile -Path "C:\FarmMergedLog.log" -Overwrite 

Then open the merged file using SharePoint ULS Viewer.

---

Where’s the SharePoint Log Path?

The default SharePoint Trace logs path is

Trac Log Path for SharePoint 2007

%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Logs

Trac Log Path for SharePoint 2010 

%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\Logs

Trac Log Path for SharePoint 2013/ 2016

%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\Logs

---

How to change the SharePoint Log Path?

It’s possible to change the default Trace log path from Central Administration by following.

• Open Central Administration > Monitoring > Reporting > Configure Diagnostic Logs.

• Beside Trace Log, you can change the Trace log path, Number of days to store log files and Restrict Trace Log disk space usage.

Note: The location you specify must exist on all servers in the farm.

---

Download ULS Viewer

• Download ULS Viewer for SharePoint 2013/2016 that provided from Microsoft.

---

Applies To

• SharePoint 2016.
• SharePoint 2013.
• SharePoint 2010.

See also

• how diagnostic logs and use health data collection logs useful for any issue occur in a sharepoint farm?
• SharePoint 2010 /2013 Log Viewer