Find and Fix Sitecore Media Items Missing Their Media Blobs

When attempting a Sitecore Serialization publish after side kicking media items from another environment, I kept receiving the following CLI error:

2025-07-03T20:28:39.4221511Z [PublishFailedException] Publish to [Internet(web)] failed.
2025-07-03T20:28:39.5776227Z ##[error]Cmd.exe exited with code '1'

In reviewing the Sitecore logs, I also found the following error multiple times:

7460 2025-06-26 15:36:42 WARN An error during Publish Pipeline Process Queue execution.
Try to republish after main part of publish will be done.
Exception: Sitecore.Framework.Data.Blobs.Abstractions.BlobProviderException
Message: No supported provider for is configured.
Source: Sitecore.Framework.Data.Blobs
at Sitecore.Framework.Data.Blobs.BlobStorage.GetBlobProvider[T](BlobIdentifier identifier)
at Sitecore.Publishing.PublishHelper.CopyBlobField(Field sourceField, Item targetVersion)
at Sitecore.Publishing.PublishHelper.CopyBlobFields(Item sourceVersion, Item targetVersion)
at Sitecore.Publishing.PublishHelper.TransformToTargetVersion(Item sourceVersion)

What is Causing This

The aforementioned log error is caused by a Sitecore issue resolved in 10.2.2 where the fix for the log error is per reference number 490149 “A BlobProviderException occurs when publishing a site item if the media was detached from the item.” – Release notes | Downloads | Sitecore Developer Portal

However, while the hotfix of upgrading to 10.2.2 may resolve the logged error, the actual issue is much deeper where media items are missing their media blobs. This could happen when content authors have not added the media file (ex. image) to the media item or perhaps a content migration issue has occurred that removed the media blob.

You will still be able to publish via the Content Editor, but serialization-based publishing will fail.

How to Find Media Items Missing Their Media Blobs

If you have Sitecore PowerShell Extensions (SPE) installed, you can leverage the following PowerShell per Dan Sinclair’s post here: Publishing error BlobProviderException: No supported provider for is configured – Sitecore Stack Exchange

Write-Host "Getting items..." -NoNewLine;
$items = Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Path "master:/sitecore/media library" | Where-Object { $_.TemplateID -ne [Sitecore.TemplateIDs]::MediaFolder -and $_.TemplateID -ne [Sitecore.TemplateIDs]::Node }
Write-Host "done." -Fore Green;

$i = 0;
$items | ForEach-Object {
  $mediaItem = [Sitecore.Data.Items.MediaItem]$_
  $blobField = $mediaItem.InnerItem.Fields["blob"]
  if($blobField -and [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($blobField.Value))
  {
      Write-Host "Empty Blob Item:" $_.ID $_.Name  $_.Paths.FullPath;
      #$_ | Remove-Item; # Commented out. Uncomment to Delete Media Items as without images/media they are not useful
  }
  $i++;
  if (($i % 500) -eq 0) {
      Write-Host "Reviewed $i items";
  }
}
Write-Host "Finished. Reviewed $i total items." -Fore Green

Note that this line is currently commented out, as the goal of the above is to identify media items missing their media blobs:

#$_ | Remove-Item; # Commented out. Uncomment to Delete Media Items as without images/media they are not useful

How to Fix Media Items Missing Media Blobs

Once you have obtained the list of media items missing their media blobs, you have two options. The first is to update the media item to have a media blob (aka image or video), or you can delete the items if they are unused/no longer needed.

If there are several items that you don’t want to manually remove, uncomment this line from the script above to bulk remove media items without media blobs.

$_ | Remove-Item; # Commented out. Uncomment to Delete Media Items as without images/media they are not useful