Category: SharePoint 2013

Microsoft SharePoint 2013

Clever Techniques for Dealing with Folder Sprawl

On November 20, 2022

In SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2019, SharePoint Online

I cannot count the number of clients I’ve encountered who have treated the default document library on a SharePoint site as the *only* document library they could use. So they filled it up with folders, then sub-folders, then sub-sub-folders, etc. It makes for a difficult conversation. I usually say “let’s take ALL of the top-level folders and make them each their own document library!” And then they say “No” because they’ve gotten used to it like this. And by “this” I mean sprawled and unmanageable, generally.

So if you’ve got sites that have folder sprawl, this article from Veronique Palmer will give your users a little help figuring out how many sub-folders are beneath your top-level folders, and how many items they contain. It’s a start. And it’s helpful.

One last piece of advice: if your organization manually provisions sites for users, delete the default “Documents” document library and during the provisioning process, ask your users to think about how many document libraries they’ll probably need going forward. Get them to provide meaningful document library names. And then create them for them.

Repair Broken Links Before or After a SharePoint Migration

By Doug

On September 6, 2022

In Office 365, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013, SharePoint Online

Today I found two tools from LinkTek that I want to share. First, the free one. LinkReporter is a free tool that reports on broken links throughout your IT enterprise. I suggest you run it and then decide to either fix the links manually or use a paid product to fix them for you.

The second tool is LinkFixer Advanced which runs against SharePoint on-premise, Microsoft 365, Box, OneDrive, DropBox, and regular file servers. It is an enterprise-wide application that appears to run against any of these platforms so it’s not specific to SharePoint at all.

For SharePoint-specific migrations, they offer a page which goes into more detail: LinkFixer Advanced for SharePoint. This could be the tool that saves your job or your sanity.

Remove Left-Hand Nav on a List Form

By Doug

On April 8, 2020

In Office 365, SharePoint 2013

Today I was asked to remove the left-hand navigation on the New Item form for a list in Office365. The form was opening in full-page mode, rather than the “modal dialog” format (aka “LightBox”) and was showing the site navigation on the left. The site owner did not want this.

This should also work on any other type of SharePoint page where you want to hide the left nav.

So I found this video which provided this excellent CSS code:

<style type="text/css">
/*      removes navigation content      */
#sideNavBox
{
display: none !important; 
width: 0px !important; 
margin: 0px !important;
}
/*      removes white space      */
#contentBox
{
margin-left: 0px !important;
}
</style>

Two important things to point out:
1. You’ll need to add a Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) to the form page. Edit the web part, then select Edit Source from the ribbon, and paste in the code there.

Edit Source button from the Ribbon — Make sure to use the Edit Source feature

2. If you cannot edit the form page, append ?ToolPaneView=2 to the URL, which I wrote about previously.

Import Excel file into an Existing List

By Doug

On January 29, 2019

In Office 365, SharePoint 2013

SharePoint offers the basic feature of importing a spreadsheet which will then become a brand new list. If any updates are made to the spreadsheet, you will either have to:

manually key in the updates to the list -or-
copy and paste the updates to the list using the DataSheet View or QuickEdit (depending on your version of SharePoint), -or-
delete the list and re-import the spreadsheet, thereby creating a new list every time

Alternatively, there is an add-in for SharePoint Online that allows you to import an Excel or CSV file into an existing SharePoint list.

Click here to go to the product page on the Microsoft App Store and add this cool add-in to your arsenal.

Hide/Remove the “Export to Excel” button

By Doug

On October 25, 2017

In SharePoint 2013

Sometimes this button has got to go.

I have a user who doesn’t want to make edits in the SharePoint list. He exports the list to Excel, makes his edits there, and then forces others to manually update the list with his edits. No more.

I tried using F12 and writing CSS code to do the trick but it wasn’t working. As usual, Google led me down many paths, most all of which were either over-the-top (write a solution in C# and deploy) or they just didn’t work. I finally found the one that worked and I confess, I wouldn’t have written the code like that. So I’m glad Wendy Li is smarter than I am.

Here’s the solution:

Edit the Page. Add a Script Viewer web part, then paste in the following code:


<style type="text/css">
 
a[id*='ExportToSpreadsheet']
{  display:none;}
 
</style>

PowerShell Command Builder for SharePoint

By Doug

On June 16, 2016

In Office 365, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013

In case you weren’t aware, Microsoft has provided a free, online PowerShell Command Builder utility:

https://www.microsoft.com/resources/TechNet/en-us/Office/media/WindowsPowerShell/WindowsPowerShellCommandBuilder.html

I recommend that you bookmark it and refer to it whenever you need to double-check the commands in your scripts. You may want to download the Getting Started Guide.

Make sure that the first thing you do is to select the appropriate version of SharePoint from the Products dropdown.

The rest is pretty straightforward.

Enjoy.

Access Denied for users with proper permissions

By Doug

On January 7, 2015

In SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013

If you have encountered an Access Denied message in SharePoint although you have proper permissions to the site, page, list, or library, then it could be one of several reasons. Hopefully one of these several fixes will work for you.

Fix #1:

For the site or sub-site with the Publishing feature enabled, ensure all users have read access to the master page library.
Site Actions > Site Settings > Master pages and page layouts > Library tab > Library Permissions > Grant Permissions button. Add Authenticated Users with Read permission level as in the screenshot below.

Fix #2:

If you experience Access Denied on file upload or download, it may be your anti-virus settings.

The following folders may have to be excluded from antivirus scanning when you use file-level antivirus software in SharePoint. If these folders are not excluded, you may see unexpected behavior. For example, you may receive “access denied” error messages when files are uploaded.

Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Data
(This folder is used for the indexing process. If the Index files are configured to be located in a different folder, you also have to exclude that location.)
Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Logs
Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Bin
Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Synchronization Service

Reference Links:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952167

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH141492

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chaun/archive/2013/08/01/do-we-really-need-to-set-antivirus-exclusions-up-for-our-sharepoint-servers.aspx

Thanks to Ripon Kundu for contributing to this section.

Fix #3:

You may also experience an Access Denied while uploading a file to a site that utilizes the Content Organizer feature *and* the site’s Drop Off Library has unique permissions.

“The resolution is to make sure that users have Contribute access to a site’s Drop Off Library” per this article.

This solution, you may notice, bears a strong resemblance to Fix #1. The takeaway here is to really mind your permissions.

SharePoint 2013 Starts to Emerge

By Doug

On April 5, 2012

In SharePoint 2013

Details about SharePoint 2013 (a.k.a. SharePoint 15) are starting to emerge. Somewhat redundanct articles from ZDnet and RedmondMag discuss some of the highlights that are currently being leaked. Both reference an enterprising fellow named Bjorn Furuknap who has started a subscription service for publishing SharePoint 2013 rumors. It looks like both of the articles rely heavily on his findings which, coupled with the caveat that anything can change at any time, means I’m going to take all of this with a grain of salt. That being said, here is the current state of the rumor mill.

SharePoint 2013 New Features Summary*

Expanded social networking capabilities
Improved user interface – This is vague and subjective. With the new Metro user-interface coming for Windows 8, “improved” could mean anything: similar to SharePoint 2010, similar to Metro, somewhere in between, or altogether different? Improved?
Changes in the Client-Side Object Model – Should make branding and site design easier and more robust
An App Marketplace – Read More – Similar to Android and iPhone app stores
Stronger Information Rights Management (IRM) functionality – Thus, increased document security and governance control out of the box.
Education Module / App / Add-on – Read More – Thus, a specific flavor of SharePoint for Educators
Expanded functionality for multi-tenancy – Good for hosting providers, so you’ll be able to get SharePoint 2013 “in the cloud” (apart from Office 365) and share server-wide apps and enhancements
Increased functionality for mobile devices – SharePoint 2010 offers limited functionality for mobile devices. Now with more and more mobile devices on the market with demand ever increasing, this is a smart move.
Allow for looping workflows in SharePoint Designer – Currently not available except in Visual Studio
Authentication via OAuth – Will allow for SharePoint 2013 to easily integrate with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites

*All, some, or none of these may ever actually materialize