Apply-PnPProvisioningTemplate – Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation

Quite a while back I experienced the following error generated by the Apply-PnPProvisioningTemplate Cmdlet.

Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.

Today I received the same error while I tried to apply PnP Templates to a site that I just created.

Maybe quite a basic mistake to make to create a new site and then change a few more things within the site and then when the PnP tmeplate is applied the ClientContext object is out of date and the above error is generated.

So to create a new site I’m first creating a new site after I checked that the site doesn’t already exist.

newWeb = web.GetWeb(Url);
if (newWeb == null)
{
WebCreationInformation newWebInfo = new Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.WebCreationInformation();
newWebInfo.WebTemplate = provisioningTemplate.BaseSiteTemplate;
newWebInfo.Description = provisioningTemplate.Description;
newWebInfo.Title = Title;
newWebInfo.Url = Url;
newWebInfo.Language = 1033;
newWeb = web.Webs.Add(newWebInfo);
ctx.Load(newWeb, w => w.Title);
ctx.ExecuteQueryRetry();

}

Then a couple of other things are done to the site. with functions/methods that use their own client context (making my above ctx out of sync)

When running the following to apply the template the Exception is thrown:

newWeb.ApplyProvisioningTemplate(provisioningTemplate, provisioningInfo);

To solve this problem I created a new context and create a new web object from this new context:

ClientContext newWebCtx = new ClientContext(ctx.Web.Url + “/” + Url);

newWebCtx.Credentials = new Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials(username, securePassword);
Web newApplyTemplateWWeb = newWebCtx.Web;
newWebCtx.Load(newWebCtx.Web);
newWebCtx.ExecuteQueryRetry();
ProvisioningTemplateApplyingInformation provisioningInfo = new ProvisioningTemplateApplyingInformation();
newWebCtx.Web.ApplyProvisioningTemplate(provisioningTemplate, provisioningInfo);

Pieter Veenstra

Is your business still running on paper trails, sprawling Excel files, or ageing Access databases? There's a better way — and I can show you exactly what it looks like. I'm the Technical Director of Vantage 365, a Microsoft solutions consultancy working with clients across the UK, the Netherlands, and worldwide. For over 30 years I've been turning messy, manual business processes into clean, automated systems that save time, reduce errors, and give teams the visibility they need to make better decisions. SharePains is not just any blog run by a Microsoft MVP. Have you ever used Try-Catch in Power Automate? The original post about Try-Catch in Power Automate can still be found on this site, https://sharepains.com/2018/02/07/try-catch-finally-in-power-automate-flow/ Or have you ever used the Pieter’s method to avoid variables and speed up your flows? https://sharepains.com/2020/03/11/pieters-method-for-advanced-in-flows/ You can contact me using contact@sharepains.com