SharePoint 2010: How to Undo Portal Super Reader /Portal Super User Account Configuration for a Web Application

A common problem that I have recently seen crop up is where you configure your web application to use portal super reader and/or portal super user accounts, and for whatever reason, you need to “unset” the configuration or revert back to the default setting. I have seen some cases where administrators try to set the account value to an empty string or a null value, which is not correct:

$wa = Get-SPWebApplication “https://urlofthewebapplication"

$wa.Properties["portalsuperuseraccount"] = "$null" (Incorrect)

$wa.Properties["portalsuperuseraccount"] = "" (Incorrect)

Instead of setting the property to null or an empty string, we need to remove the property from the web application’s properties Hashtable. Here is the correct way to “unset” the portal super reader and the portal super user account properties of a web application:

$wa = Get-SPWebApplication “https://urlofthewebapplication”

$wa.Properties.Remove("portalsuperuseraccount")

$wa.Properties.Remove("portalsuperreaderaccount")

$wa.Update()

Happy SharePointing!