When creating a list instance manually in a SharePont 2010, it is important to remember to add the right FeatureId attribute to the ListInstance element, if the TemplateType attribute points to a list template which is not in the same feature as the one you are creating the list instance in. If you forget, you will get some very vague error messages.

I was creating a list instance with a custom schema attached and when I tried to deploy I got this error message:

Error occurred in deployment step ‘Activate Features’: Invalid file name.

The file name you specified could not be used. It may be the name of an existing file or directory, or you may not have permission to access the file.

At first I thought it was because of the custom schema, so I removed it, but that just resulted in this even more vague error message:

Error occurred in deployment step ‘Activate Features’: Cannot complete this action.

Please try again.

After digging around the SharePoint 2010 documentation a bit, I found out that I was missing the FeatureId attribute in my ListInstance declaration. If left out, SharePoint assumes that the list template exists in the same feature as the list instance, which was not the case, since I had the TemplateType set to 100 (Custom List). With FeatureId="00bfea71-de22-43b2-a848-c05709900100" everything started playing nice again.

The final ListInstance declaration including a FeatureId attribute matching the TemplateType attribute:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <ListInstance Title="Invoices"
                OnQuickLaunch="TRUE"
                TemplateType="100"
                FeatureId="00bfea71-de22-43b2-a848-c05709900100"
                Url="Lists/Invoices"
                Description="Invoices."
                VersioningEnabled="TRUE"
                DocumentTemplate=""
                CustomSchema="InvoicesListInstance/Schema.xml">
  </ListInstance>  
</Elements>

I found two pages on the net with list templates and their Feature Id’s, hopefully this will help somebody else save a little hair.