What can be done about negative numbers in library item counts? ItemCount is a read-only property, what are you supposed to do when it is drastically incorrect?
Earlier last week, I was doing some testing involving the copying and moving of files and folders from one document library to another. I was transfering the items from our actual document library to a sandbox “Test” library that I used to run all sorts of object model and workflow testing in before migrating to the public lists and libraries. I noticed that with files, things worked correctly, but when I copied a folder that had a file inside it (using SPFolder.CopyTo()), the item count for the test library did not actually update. Since this testing was mostly playing around, I paid it little heed.
Today I was back in the test library to test a different workflow (regarding PDF conversion). While I was there, I decided to delete the folder I left last week since I didn’t need it anymore. And that’s when I saw the item count for the list drop to -1 in the All Site Content View. When I deleted the new PDF I had just uploaded, it then dropped to -2! I even checked with the object model… getting an instance of the library I checked the ItemCount property… lo and behold it was also -2.
Is there any process which runs in the background, kinda like the one that cleans up workflow history, which will correct this kind of issue? Or is a programmer expected to keep watch for this kind of situation and come up with calculations to compensate the “count penalty”, as it were?
There are lots of references on the web about similar things to this. Example:
http://pholpar.wordpress.com/2008/03/15/negative-item-count-in-document-libraries/
You are most likely running into bugs in the SharePoint software or you are using the Object Model in ways that MS never intended.