Unable to edit / change existing Alert

Or how to change existing Alerts.

See this post if you want to know how to set up Alerts or RSS feeds

Alerts in SharePoint are a really nice and easy way to keep yourself updated on key documents or lists.

I had a colleague that was perfectly able to add a new default alert on a document. She then found out that she was editing the document very frequently, so it was not very practical that she received emails informing about changes she made herself.

She proceeded to the change so that she should only receive updates if anyone else made changes to the document. This did not work for her at all. She kept getting huge amounts of mails from SharePoint about changes she made.

What she experienced is something that happens to a lot of SharePoint users, me included .

Alerts in SharePoint are really easy to set up, but it may not be apparent to everyone how you can modify an already existing alert.

The page you add your Alerts on is also the page most users turn to when they want to make changes to the existing Alert and that will only cause you to create another Alert.. In other words, the menu choice that says “Alert Me” should have been named “Create new Alert” or something because it is not the same page that lets you modify existing Alerts.

Let’s change an existing Alert:

To edit an existing Alert either open the actions menu or a list items context menu and click the Alert Me link.

There is a small link on the top of the page. It is easy to miss since it looks like the small help links that I rarely use.

On the page that opens, you will see all the alerts that have been added to the current web site and you will also be able to delete the alerts you don’t want anymore.

Click on any of the alerts to open up the page where you can edit it.

It’s a tad bit hidden, and the wording on the menus should perhaps have been different or the link for the website alerts emphasized.