SharePoint Designer Custom Datasheet View– Unable to Display Webpart Error

Problem:  

I had a requirement to create a highly customized view of one of their lists on their SharePoint 2010 Server Environment.  To do this, I created a DataViewWebpart in SharePoint Designer and applied conditional formatting to do the color coding which the client required. 

It looked great, however, they were getting this error nearly every time they opened up the link:

Although they could refresh and eventually get the page to display, it was obviously an annoyance that needed to be fixed.

Solution:

Check the XSLT Timeout and set to higher if necessary

If you have the February 2012 CU or later, you will have an option in PowerShell to check what the XSLT Timeout is set to and set it to a higher timeout.

By default this timeout is set to 5 seconds which is usually sufficient.  However, certain SharePoint updates, such as the June 2011 CU, for whatever reason, set this value to 1 second.  If you have a customized list with a lot of columns and conditional formatting, 1 second just isn’t going to cut it.

Run this PowerShell Command to check your current XSLT Timeout:

Get-SPFarm | Select XsltTransformTimeOut