Editing Web Part properties with PowerShell CSOM in SharePoint

This PowerShell script can help when you need to change a Web Part property in SharePoint for multiple sites. We have used my script to create around 300 sites using a custom template. Certain sites were already in production when we found an issue with a certain Web Part. In stead of changing this manually I have created a script to loop through all sites and change a certain Web Part property. The script that I’ve created does the following:

1. Loop through all subwebs from a given start point
2. Get the specific .aspx page
3. Get the correct Web Part
4. Change the property

The below example will change the property of a specific Web Part on the default /SitePages/Home.aspx

Running the script

We will first start by opening the SharePoint Online Management Shell as administrator which can be downloaded at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35588.

You will need to change the first variables in the Change-WebPart function to match your Office 365 tenant and copy this bit to PowerShell.

function Change-WebPart {
	#variables that needs to be set before starting the script
	$siteURL = "https://spfire.sharepoint.com"
	$userName = "mpadmin@spfire.onmicrosoft.com"
	$webURL = "https://spfire.sharepoint.com"
	$relativePageUrl = "/SitePages/Home.aspx"
  
	# Let the user fill in their password in the PowerShell window
	$password = Read-Host "Please enter the password for $($userName)" -AsSecureString</pre>
	# set SharePoint Online credentials
	$SPOCredentials = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($userName, $password)

	# Creating client context object
	$context = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($webURL)
	$context.credentials = $SPOCredentials

	#get Page file
	$page = $context.web.getFileByServerRelativeUrl($relativePageUrl)
	$context.load($page)

	#send the request containing all operations to the server
	try{
		$context.executeQuery()
	}
	catch{
		write-host "Error: $($_.Exception.Message)" -foregroundcolor red
	}

	#use the WebPartManger to load the webparts on a certain page
	$webPartManager = $page.GetLimitedWebPartManager([System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.PersonalizationScope]::Shared)
	$context.load($webPartManager.webparts)

	#send the request containing all operations to the server
	try{
		$context.executeQuery()
	}
	catch{
		write-host "Error: $($_.Exception.Message)" -foregroundcolor red
	}

	#loop through all WebParts to get the correct one and change its property
	foreach($webPartDefinition in $webpartmanager.webparts){
		$context.Load($webPartDefinition.WebPart.Properties)

		#send the request containing all operations to the server
		try{
			$context.executeQuery()
		}
		catch{
			write-host "Error: $($_.Exception.Message)" -foregroundcolor red
		}

		#Only change the webpart with a certain title
		if ($webPartDefinition.WebPart.Properties.FieldValues.Title -eq "Documents")
		{
			$webPartDefinition.webpart.properties["Title"] = "My Documents"
			$webPartDefinition.SaveWebPartChanges()
		}
	}
}
Change-WebPart

First enter your password and press enter (I didn’t add output on this script so trust me that I didn’t had any errors )

The above script has changed

To

This script is not very useful when changing only 1 web part but image you need to change a certain web part on 200 project sites because of a template update or mistake. This way you can update all your project sites matching the changes you have made in the template regarding web parts.

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