You receive 'Timeout' errors in logs and job does not complete.

Last updated: 2026-09-21

Resolve timeout errors that prevent SharePoint Essentials Toolkit jobs from completing. Adjust timeout settings and optimize job scope.

Error Message

When running a job using the SharePoint Essentials Toolkit, you may see an error such as 'Connection Timeout'. At other times, you may see errors 'Timeout' and 'Thread Aborted'.

You may see "Connection timeouts" more often if you are running jobs for multiple sites at once in a batch job.

Details

Error 1: "Connection timeout". When the toolkit is connecting to a SharePoint site, it has a "Default Connection Timeout" setting that helps prevent unresponsive sites/web applications from causing the tool to hang and wait infinitely. However, sometimes (especially with SharePoint Online), the connection could be in a queue or 'waiting process' when you may have many connections happening with other jobs, or even other (SharePoint) applications.

Error 2: The "Thread aborted" messages relate to Broken Link Manager. There is a "Timeout" setting for items so that the tool does not hang or become unresponsive when processing items. If the toolkit is not able to parse an item/file/web page within the "Item Scan Timeout" time, it will show an error "Thread being aborted" in the logs.

Fix / Workarounds

Error: "Connection timeout" in logs and no report is generated.

Solution: Increase the "Item Processing Timeout" in Settings page.

This setting may impact performance if there are many large files or the tool hangs on certain files it will wait until the timeout is hit before giving up. Typically, 900 seconds is more than enough.