SOLVED: SharePoint Online Solutions Error You Don’t Have Access To This Page

Microsoft has been tightening up security since… forever and the latest round affecting SharePoint Online can be befuddling.  If you are trying to upload a .WSP solution to the Solutions Gallery you might see “Sorry, you don’t have access to this page” even if you are the administrator.  If you click REQUEST ACCESS and then grant yourself access, the problem still persists.  Fortunately, with many hours of playing and help from Amrein Engineering and Microsoft, we have an answer.

Lets start at the start with the inability to even get to the SOLUTIONS page, because the links have been removed.  If you are in your SharePoint SITE SETTINGS and you do not see SOLUTIONS under WEB DESIGN GALLERIES, you likely have scripting disabled and that is a problem caused by recent security changes.  The fix for your DEFAULT SITE COLLECTION is to go to your SharePoint Admin Center https://YOUR-DOMAIN-admin.sharepoint.com click on SETTINGS and set the TWO settings beside CUSTOM SCRIPT to “Allow users to run custom script”.

That will solve the problem for your default site collection.  If you still have problems with your default site collection, you might find THIS post useful.  In my case, I was working on a new site collection and that change did not solve the problem.  According to Microsoft support, I needed to use PowerShell to solve it:

1. Download PowerShell for SharePoint Online from Microsoft
   .
2. Set the execution policy:
   set-executionpolicy remotesigned
   .
   
3. Connect this PowerShell session to your site:
   connect-sposervice -url https://YOUR-O365-DOMAIN-admin.sharepoint.com
   .
   
4. Set the scripting policy:
   Set-SPOsite https://YOUR-O365-DOMAIN.sharepoint.com/sites/ your-site-collection -DenyAddAndCustomizePages 0
   (that is a zero, not the letter ‘o’)

Now you should be able to go to your sites collections SOLUTIONS page, either through SITE SETTINGS or directly https://YOUR-O365-DOMAIN.sharepoint.com/sites/your-site-collection/_catalogs/solutions/Forms/AllItems.aspx and upload all the unsafe scripts your heart desires.

These commands came from Jaidev S. at Microsoft Office 365 support which you can contact at 800 865 9408 in Canada and the US but our good friends at Amrein Engineering, purveyors of the Daily Dilbert webpart were also quite helpful as usual.