How to use SharePoint Alert Me feature in list or library

This SharePoint tutorial explains, SharePoint Alert Me, how to configure the Alert Me settings in SharePoint 2013/2016 list or document library. This is almost the same for SharePoint Online Office 365 also. We will also see, how to fix, SharePoint alert me not visible issue.

SharePoint Alert Me in list or library

SharePoint Alert me is a very useful option where you can receive an email notification or text message notifications in your mobile if some changes happened in your SharePoint list or document library.

You can get alerts in changes like if someone added an item to list, or someone edited the item or if someone deleted an item, etc. You can set the alert for the whole list or document library as well as you can set it for the individual items also.

To use Alert users must have at least View Items permissions.

In SharePoint 2010 you can set the alert to the logged in user, But in SharePoint 2013 there is an option to send the alerts to multiple users through Send Alerts To section where you can add multiple users in a semicolon-separated.

Configure Alert Me in SharePoint List or Library

Now, we will see how to configure the Alert Me feature in the SharePoint list or library.

Open your SharePoint list and then From the Ribbon click on the Alert Me -> “Set alert on this list” button as shown in the fig below:

Then it will open the New Alert dialog box where you can set up your alert details.

Enter a Title for the alert.

Then through Send Alerts To you can send alerts to multiple people by putting the username or email addresses in comma-separated.

In the Delivery, the method chooses how you want to receive the alerts by email or as a text message to your mobile.

Then you can select on which changes you want the alerts to be sent.

In the last, you can set when to send the alerts. You want to send the notification immediately, or on a specific time or daily or weekly, etc.

SharePoint alert me not visible

Sometimes, you will not see the Alert Me button in the SharePoint list or library button. We will see here, how to bring back the Alert Me button if that is not visible in Ribbon in SharePoint 2013 lists.

Alert Me is a very useful feature where you can receive Email or Mobile notifications if something changes in the list. But sometimes you do not see the Alert Me button in the Ribbon.

One of the reasons is if your outgoing mail settings are not configured in the server.

The solution is to configure the outgoing email settings which can be done by the Central Administration.

Open SharePoint 2013 Central Administration -> The System Settings and then click on “Configure outgoing e-mail settings” which is presented under E-mail and Text Messages.

Then in the Outgoing E-mail Settings page, give your Outbound SMTP server, From address, Reply-to address, etc. Then click on OK.

Then come to the list page, you will be able to see the Alert Me button in the Ribbon.

If the above solution did not work try to use the below STSADM or PowerShell command to enable the alerts for the SharePoint list or library.

STSADM:

stsadm -o setproperty -pn alerts-enabled -pv true -url http://YourServerURL

PowerShell:

$webapp=Get-SPWebApplication "http://YourServerURL"
$webapp.AlertsEnabled = $true
$webapp.Update()

Alert has been created successfully but you will not receive notifications until valid e-mail or mobile address has been provided in your profile

Let us see, how to solve Alert has been created successfully but you will not receive notifications until valid e-mail or mobile address has been provided in your profile error in SharePoint.

We will see how to fix the issue while working with Alerts in SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint Online Office 365. Recently after setting an alert for a document library, I got the error which says:

Sorry, something went wrong
You do not have an e-mail address.
Alert has been created successfully but you will not receive notifications until valid e-mail or mobile address has been provided in your profile.

If you are working in the on-premise environment then you can go to the Active Directory Users and Computers and then you can select the particular user and add an email address to it.

Then next time when the user profile synchronization happens then the email address should appear and the above error will not appear.

If you are using SharePoint Online, then here also user needs to update the work email address.

First login as a global administrator and login to the SharePoint admin center.

Then from the left side click on user profiles.

Then click Manage User Properties which is under the People section.

Then under Contact Information, select Work email and click on edit.

Then in the Edit Settings section, check the checkbox “Allow users to edit values for this property” like below:

After that user can change the email id from the Delve profile. Click on About me -> Then in the Delve profile page click on Edit Profile.

Then under Contact Information user can change the Work email like below:

After this, the error should not come.

This is how to fix the error Alert has been created successfully but you will not receive notifications until valid e-mail or mobile address has been provided in your profile in SharePoint Online.

Disable alerts in SharePoint list or library

Let us see, how to disable alerts in a particular SharePoint list or document library using PowerShell.

We can easily enable or disable alert in SharePoint using STSADM or PowerShell command.

Disable alerts in SharePoint using STSADM

Step 1: The below is the screenshot of my library where you can see the Alert me option on the right side of the ribbon in any list and document library in SharePoint. Below is the list ribbon in SharePoint 2019.

Step 2: You have to run the below command to deactivate alert in web application level or site collection level in SharePoint.

stsadm -o setproperty -propertyname alerts-enabled -propertyvalue false -url http://rajsitecollection/sites/Attendance

Step 3: Once this command executed successfully then Alert me option will disappear from the document library.

Enable alerts in SharePoint using STSADM

Below is the STSADM command to enable alerts in SharePoint.

stsadm -o setproperty -propertyname alerts-enabled -propertyvalue true-url http://rajsitecollection/sites/Attendance

Enable/Disable alerts in SharePoint using PowerShell

Below is the PowerShell script to enable/disable alerts in SharePoint 2013/2016/2019.

$webapp= Get-SPWebApplication "http://rajsitecollection"
 
# To disable alerts for SharePoint Web application
$webapp.AlertsEnabled = $false
$webapp.Update()
 
# To enable alerts in SharePoint Web application
$webapp.AlertsEnabled = $true
$webapp.Update()

You may like following PowerShell SharePoint tutorials:

Note: You may need to restart the ” Windows SharePoint Services Timer” or execute stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs once.

I hope this helps to enable/disable Alert feature in SharePoint 2019/2016/2013.

Alerts are not working in SharePoint 2013

Let us see, how to fix errors, alerts are not working in SharePoint 2013. The same solution, you can follow to fix alerts are not working in SharePoint 2016 error.

I was not receiving alerts from a specific site collection in my SharePoint server, on the other hand, I am getting alerts from other site collections from the same SharePoint server.

SharePoint 2013 alerts are not working

Later some research I have realized that alerts are disabled on Web Application of the Site Collection in the SharePoint server. Where we could check that?

Open SharePoint Central Administration -> Application Management -> Manage Web Applications -> Select the desired web Application (as shown below)

I have realized that alerts were off on that SharePoint web application.

To resolve the issue, we have to enable the alerts in the SharePoint web application. We can enable alert:

• From SharePoint 2016/2013 central administration
• By using PowerShell cmdlets

Enable Alerts from SharePoint Central Administration

We can easily enable alert in the web application, Open SharePoint Central Administration -> Application Management -> Manage Web Applications -> Select the desired web Application

Enable alerts as part of General settings of Web Application and click on OK on the popup window.

Enable Alerts on SharePoint Web Application through PowerShell

We can also use PowerShell cmdlets to check, enable and disable alerts for the web application in SharePoint 2013/2016.

Check alerts on the requires web application using PowerShell

Below, is the PowerShell command to check alerts on a web application using PowerShell.

$webappUlr = Get-SPWebApplication "<Web Application URL>"
$webappUlr.AlertsEnabled

Enable/disable Alerts using PowerShell in SharePoint

Below is the PowerShell cmdlets to enable or disable alerts in SharePoint 2013/2016 web application.

$webappUlr = Get-SPWebApplication "<Web Application URL>"
# To enable alerts in this Web application
$webappUlr.AlertsEnabled = $true
$webappUlr.Update()
# To disable alerts in this Web application
$webappUlr.AlertsEnabled = $false
$webappUlr.Update()

This is how to fix sharepoint alerts not working error in SharePoint 2013/2016 or SharePoint 2019.

How to enable and configure search alerts in SharePoint

Let us see, how to enable and configure search alerts in SharePoint 2013/2016. Search alert an end-user can receive e-mail notifications for a particular search query results are changed or updated.

Suppose you want to search for something with the keyword “SharePoint”. Then you can set an alert for the search query (SharePoint) and you will get notified by email if the specified search query results are changed or updated. These alerts are particular to the user only and the particular user can configure or modify the search alerts.

By default Search, alerts are enabled. But still, if you want to disable to enable the search alerts then follow below steps:

• Open your SharePoint central administration. From the Application Management section, click on Manage service applications.
• Then click the Search service application for which you want to configure search alerts. This will open the Search Administration page.
• Go to the System Status section and find for Search alerts status.
• Here you can choose Off or On to disable or enable search alerts.

Configure Search Alerts in SharePoint 2013/2016/Online

Follow below steps to configure Search Alerts in SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint Online:

Open your site and put the keyword in the search box and click on Enter. This will basically take you to the search result page.

In the search results page, go to the bottom of the page and click on Alert Me link as shown in the fig below:

This will open the New Alert page where you can configure the alert.

Give a name for the Alert.

It will populate the current user’s email id in the Delivery method.

This is the only option to get search alerts. In case of SharePoint list or library alert, we can have email as well as text message option to get alerts.

Office 365- Here if you have not any email id configured then it will display an error message We weren’t able to find an email address for you. Please contact your server administrator.

You can select the change type for which you want to receive alerts.

In the case of Search Alerts, you have the option to get the alert as a daily summary or weekly summary. We can not get the alerts immediately or at a specified time. This is the same for SharePoint 2013 on-premise as well as SharePoint Online in office 365.

You may like following the SharePoint list or library tutorials:

• Create and Manage Task List in SharePoint
• Change column ordering in list forms in SharePoint Online
• Different ways to create auto increment column in SharePoint list
• Get all lists and document libraries programmatically using CSOM in SharePoint Online
• Create a Survey in SharePoint Online
• Different ways to hide/disable quick edit in a list in SharePoint
• Change default list view style using CSS in SharePoint
• Copy list items from one list to another in SharePoint programmatically using CSOM

In this tutorial, we learned the Alert Me feature in SharePoint, how to configure Alert Me in SharePoint list or library. Also, we checked how to enable Alerts in the SharePoint list or library using PowerShell or STSADM.

We also saw how to fix error:

• sharepoint alerts not working
• sharepoint 2013 alerts not working
• sharepoint alert me not visible