Adrenaline Junkie - Suprej Venkat

These files can't be opened, Windows Server 2008

2011-03-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

When trying to install exe on Windows Server 2008, you might see the error These files cant be opened

Your internet security settings prevented one or more files to be opened.

Right click on the file, click on properties and at the bottom of the general tab, you would see a “Unblock” button. If you trust the file you are trying to install, click on the button and click ok.

Then right click on the exe again and select “Run as Administrator”, that should run the program

Installing Visual Studio 2010 on Windows Server 2008 R2 Error

2011-03-25T03:26:00.000-07:00

The installation of visual studio 2010 will fail displaying a number of different reasons when trying to install using an ISO mounted drive on Windows Server 2008 R2.
One possible solution for this if the server has access to the internet is to use the web installer to install visual studio. You will find the corresponding web installers for each of the Visual Studio versions on MSDN. When using a web installer the installation succeeds.

Hide "Home" link in top navigation of SharePoint 2010

2011-02-17T06:51:00.000-08:00

Hide the home node in the top navigation menu of SharePoint 2010

In SharePoint 2007, if we set the datasource providor value of ShowStartingNode="False", the "home" link used to be hidden but if you try the same setting in SharePoint 2010, it does not work.

ShowStartingNode="False"
SiteMapProvider="Tried CombinedNavSiteMapProvider and SPNavigationProvider"

To fix this, I had to use the PortalSiteMapDataSource which used to exist in Moss 2007. To get it working follow the steps below:

1. Add a register tag to your master page

2. Add a PortalSiteMapDataSource to the master page

(Open Square Bracket) PublishingNavigation:PortalSiteMapDataSource

ID="GlobalNavDataSource"

Runat="server"

SiteMapProvider="CombinedNavSiteMapProvider"

EnableViewState="true"

StartFromCurrentNode="true"

StartingNodeOffset="0"

ShowStartingNode="false"

TreatStartingNodeAsCurrent="true"

TrimNonCurrentTypes="Heading" / (close square bracket)

3. Update your top navigation to use this data source instead

(Open Square Bracket)
PublishingNavigation:PortalSiteMapDataSource

ID="GlobalNavDataSource"

Runat="server"

SiteMapProvider="CombinedNavSiteMapProvider"

EnableViewState="true"

StartFromCurrentNode="true"

StartingNodeOffset="0"

ShowStartingNode="false"

TreatStartingNodeAsCurrent="true"

TrimNonCurrentTypes="Heading"/(close square bracket)

I have not tested it completly for side effects as I am just trying these things out in 2010. Will update this post if I find any side effects because of this.

Another way of doing this is through CSS...

.s4-tn li.static > a {

display: none !important;

}

.s4-tn li.static > ul a {

display: block !important;

}

TFS keeps file checked out after successful check in

2011-01-26T06:56:00.000-08:00

Some people might experience that on checking in a file into TFS, the file is actually checked into source control but the “checked out” icon appears in visual studio.

This is because of a visual studio settings, to change this follow these instructions.

1. Open visual studio

2. Navigate to Tools - Options and under the “Source Control” - "Environment" - untick the check box that says "Keep items checked out when checking in"
That's it!

Provisioning the Web Analytics Service Application on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

2010-12-21T04:01:00.000-08:00

Before creating the web analytics service application, ensure the services on server have the following services as stopped "Analytics Data Processing Service and Web Analytics Web Service.".

If the services are not stopped then the creation of the service application seems to fail.

Also before creating the web analytics service application the
Usage and Health Data Collection and the Session State Service Application have to be provisioned on the farm

1. Navigate to SharePoint 2010 Central Administration.

2. Select Manage service applications under Application Management.
3. Under the New option, select "Web Analytics Service Application"
4. A form is displayed which requests the user to enter a name for the service, an app pool account, the database server name and two databases, one for the reporting and one for the staging database.
5. Once this is entered, click ok and the service will be created
6. Navigate to the services on server page and start the Analytics Data Processing Service and Web Analytics Web Service. If you have a farm environment, then start it on the server where you want the services to run
7. Navigate to the Central Admin page and select - "Monitoring"
8. Click on "Configure usage and health data collection" and choose the logs that are required.
9. Test whether the reports are working by selecting Monitoring from SharePoint 2010 Central Administration and then select View Web Analytics reports under Reporting

Configuring People Search in SharePoint 2010

2010-12-21T03:44:00.000-08:00

In SharePoint 2010, people search crawls are not added to the content source sometimes and if you dont see people results, there are a couple of things that you need to check.

Ensure that the user profiles are crawled. To do that go to the search settings page and click on manage content sources - (It’s under Central Administration –> Service Applications –> Search Service Application –> Manage button) Click on content sources..

If an address starting with sps3 does not exist, then add it of the format sps3://intraneturl (where intraneturl is the url of your default intranet site).

Once that step is done, permissions need to be granted to the search crawl account to crawl the content.

To do that, go to the Service Applications page, click on the tab User Profile Service Application, do not click on the link but just highlight that line and click on the "Administrators" button at the top of the page. This will show a window where admin users can be added..If the search crawling account does not appear then add the account to the window and choose the permissions "Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers" from the permissions list check box. If this step is not done, an access denied message will be shown in the SharePoint 2010 crawl logs.

Once the above steps are done, full crawl of the content source needs to be done after which the people search will bring back results.

Slipstreamed Install of MOSS 2007

2010-06-27T13:03:00.001-07:00

Until recently to install SharePoint 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2 we had to manually slipstream MOSS SP1 with SP2, but since Jan 20th 2010 Microsoft have released MOSS SP2 slipstreamed package, it is available on MSDN!

Adding web parts to Document library throwing error

2010-05-24T07:45:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you may want to add a content editor to a document library page http://server/Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?PageView=Shared and might want to move it above or below the document library and might get the error below

"The file is not checked out. You must first check out this document before making changes."

This is because in the "Versioning Settings" of the document library settings the item "Require documents to be checked out before they can be edited?" might have been set to "yes". Though you may wonder that you were not editing any documents but just trying to move the document library web part around in the page and it still would not allow you to make any changes before you turn the "require documents to be checked out..." option to "no"!

Once you have moved your web parts around you can go back and change the versioning settings back to how it was.

Delegation Tab missing Windows Server 2008

2010-04-21T02:42:00.000-07:00

When trying to setup Kerberos to work with SharePoint you need to setup the app pool account as trusted for delegation. you may find that the delegation tab is missing in AD in Windows Server 2008, this is "as designed", the delegation tab will appear only after an SPN is created for the service account.

So do setspn -A HTTP/intranet.domain.local DOMAIN\Account from a command prompt in the famr and then go to AD and search for the DOMAIN\ACcount and you will see the delegation tab appear.

WSP Stuck on deploying or retracting in Solution Management

2010-04-20T01:38:00.001-07:00

If your solution package is stuck on deploying or retracting status for a long time on the "Solution Management" page in SharePoint Central Admin then check that the "Windows SharePoint Services Timer" windows service is started on ALL the web front end machines.

SharePoint Server 2010 VS SharePoint Foundation 2010 Features

2010-03-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

Microsoft have a good feature list available in the new SharePoint release.

Sharepoint foundation is the free version, was called WSS in 2007 version.
Features can be found here..
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee539826(office.14).aspx

SharePoint Server 2010 is the licened version, was called MOSS in 2007
Features can be found here…
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee557323(office.14).aspx

Error when adding web part solution package An object in the SharePoint administrative framework

2010-03-25T04:19:00.000-07:00

You sometimes may recieve the error below when trying to do stsadm -o addsolution -filename "wspname.wsp"

An object in the SharePoint administrative framework, "SPSolutionLanguagePack Name=0 Parent=SPSolution Name=il.sharepoint.workflows.wsp", depends on other objects which do not exist. Ensure that all of the objects dependencies are created and retry this operation.

wspname.wsp: The Solution installation failed.

This is especially the case if you have just done a retract/uninstall and you try to add straight away. If you try again in a few seconds it will work. Basically this is because when you delete a wsp from solution management and then immediately run this stsadm command, there will still be clean up operations going on in the background. So just leave a slight delay between uninstall of solution packages and re-deploys.

SharePoint Search Crawl Returns Access Denied

2010-03-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

Our SharePoint search suddenly stopped working last week and on googling found out that if the Default Content Access Account in SSP - Search Administration - Default Content Access Account is of the format domain\username it seems to fail but once changed to the format of username@domain.local it works!

"Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this content. (The item was deleted because it was either not found or the crawler was denied access to it.)".

Restricting access to mysites in SharePoint

2010-02-26T08:20:00.000-08:00

You may come accross the requirment where you would want only certain group of people to be able to create my sites. This is possible by modifying permissions on Shared Services Provider, to do so follow these steps

1. Logon to Central Admin
2. Click on the Shared Services Provider that hosts my sites
3. Click on "Personalization services permissions" under the group "User Profiles and My Sites"
4. Click on the group "NT AUTHORITY\Authenticated Users" if it exists in that list and untick the option "Create Personal Site" and click save.
5. Using the menu on the permissions page, add the SharePoint group that you want to give permissions to
6. Click on the Group that you just added and select the permissions "Create Personal Site" and jobs done!

Modify Web Part Properties window very small

2010-02-19T08:29:00.000-08:00

When editing a SharePoint publishing page or my site page and if the "modify shared web part" window appears very small or not visible then the short cut fix is to set the below style in your css file that is referenced from your Master Page

#MSO_tblPageBody {
height:600px !important;
}

The Trial Period for this product has expired - SharePoint 2007

2010-02-14T12:23:00.000-08:00

I recently copied a Virtual Hard Disk from my Colleague and when I tried to create a new Publishing site, I got the error message "The trial period for this product has expired". I checked the licence tab in Central Admin and found that it said it was a enterprise licence.

On further investigation I found out that the service account used for the web application where I was trying to create a publishing site was using the "Network Service" account, on changing this to an account that was a member of the local administrator's group (since this was a development VM loaded on my laptop) the error message vanished, how strange!

SharePoint Search Error - failed due to the following error: 800703fa.

2010-02-09T06:40:00.000-08:00

When I tried to edit my User Profiles and Properties page in my Shared Services Providor, I saw the error below

"An error occured while accessing the SQL Server database or the Office SharePoint Server Search Service. If this is the first time you have seen this messag, try again later. If this problem persists, contact your administrator"

On clicking on the Search Settings in the SSP, I got the error below, and the same error repeated in the event log..
Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {BDEADEE2-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F} failed due to the following error: 800703fa.

Also no search results were being returned.

We were running MOSS 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2. The solutions was to reset IIS! No idea why I had this problem and how it solved but didnt have the time to investigate it that day!

One Way Trust in SharePoint , People Picker and Profiles

2010-02-09T04:46:00.000-08:00

We had a scenario where SharePoint was installed on Domain A and the users whom accessed SharePoint where from Domain B.

This will work most of the time until you start doing things like People Picker in SharePoint and configuring profiles, my sites etc.

There is some more work for that to happen as listed below

1. To get people picker working correctly for users from other domains you need to run the syntax stsadm -o setproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadforests -pv domain:domain1.com;domain:domain2.com,domain2\user,password –url https://sharepoint.domain1.com (good guide on this http://www.gk.id.au/2009/04/people-picker-sharepoint-and-forest.html)

2. To greet people from the one-way trust domain by name in SharePoint and to enable creating my sites for the other domain users , you would need to import the profiles of the users from the second domain. You need to do this by going to shared services providor - User Profile and Properties - Configure Profile Import (at the bottom of the page)

Once on that page, choose custom source and create a new source for the AD (example of syntax to use for the custom source can be found here or just google http://miss-sharepoint.blogspot.com/2008/04/custom-source-in-profile-import.html)

3. If you also want the one-way trust users to have their own "my site" then you need to change the app pool account that your my sites web application uses to an account from "Domain B". This is because since it is a one-way trus between
Domain A <- B, a domain account in A will not be able to talk to B but in order for my sites to work, my sites app pool accountconnects to the domain where the user is from to get the information related to the user but it will work the other way round because B has a one way trust with A.

So create a domain user account in Domain B and through Central Admin update the App Pool account that my sites uses to the Domain B account.

Finally add that app pool account into the farms administrator's group to complete the process.

The trial period for this product has expired. Kwizcom

2010-02-09T04:28:00.000-08:00

We had a strange problem where certain users were seeing the Kwizcom "trial period for this product has expired" message whereas it was working for others, obviously we had the full licence and had activated it when this occured.

On investigation we found out that our Alternate Access Mappings in SharePoint was not setup correctly i.e. we have multiple WFE's but in AAM we did not have entries for all the WFE's as internal url's and also our public url was not in the Intranet Zone and this for some reason had caused Kwizcom web part to show as though this message!

System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException: The system cannot find the file specified

2010-02-09T04:23:00.000-08:00

When working with Geneva and SharePoint and if you get the error System.Security.Cyptography.CryptographicException: the system cannot find the file specified, the fix is to run the command below where "AppPoolName" is the name of the app pool under which the SharePoint Web App runs

appcmd set apppool "AppPoolName" -processModel.loadUserProfile:true

appcmd can be found at %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\ directory

My Site - There has been an error creating the personal site.

2010-02-09T02:56:00.000-08:00

If you recieve the error "There has been an error creating the personal site. Contact your site administrator for more information" and you have users from multiple domains or one-way trusted domains then you need to add the application pool that the Mysites web application runs under into the farm administrators group.

unrecognized configuration section 'connectionstrings'

2009-07-06T02:47:00.000-07:00

When hosting a website in IIS you may get the error below when trying to view the page in IE.

unrecognized configuration section 'connectionstrings'

One of the reasons for this maybe because in IIS, the website is configured as a .Net 1.1 application rather than .Net 2.0, to fix this, right click on the website application in IIS and choose properties and click on the ASP.Net tab and choose the ASP.Net version to be 2.0!

data view web part This page allows a limit of 200 controls DataFormwebPart

2009-06-09T06:38:00.000-07:00

When working with the Dataview web part I got the error below
This page allows a limit of 200 controls....

I experienced this when adding a lot of "Related Data Sources". I tried adding the dataview web part created using multiple document libraries on a number of pages but got the same error.

But once I started from scratch again and created the first data source and added the "Related Data Sources" one by one again, it seemed to work, no idea why!

Updating SharePoint Menu

2009-05-22T08:29:00.000-07:00

Updating SharePoint Dropdown Menu Text, updating defailt text in SharePoint like "Change Site Settings", "Manage Users", etc.

If you absolutely want to change the text that appears on Dropdown lists in SharePoint, for example things like below, you can edit the Core.JS and OWS.js files in the 12 hive at the location C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033.

But please be aware that this is not a recommended process because if you get any SharePoint updates or migrate sites from one server to another server you would loose these changes. But putting down here anyway!

var L_Edit_Text="Edit";
var L_ViewItem_Text="View Item";
var L_EditItem_Text="Edit Item";
var L_EditSeriesItem_Text="Edit Series";
var L_DeleteItem_Text="Delete Item";
var L_DeleteDocItem_Text="Delete";
var L_ViewProperties_Text="View Properties";
var L_EditProperties_Text="Edit Properties";
var L_ViewResponse_Text="View Response";
var L_EditResponse_Text="Edit Response";
var L_DeleteResponse_Text="Delete Response";
var L_Subscribe_Text="Alert Me";
var L_CustomizeNewButton_Text="Change New Button Order";
var L_Review_Text="Send for Review";
var L_EditIn_Text="Edit in ^1";
var L_EditInApplication_Text="Edit Document"
var L_Checkin_Text="Check In";
var L_Checkout_Text="Check Out";
var L_DiscardCheckou_Text="Discard Check Out";
var L_CreateDWS_Text="Special Activity Workspaces";
var L_PublishBack_Text="Publish to Source Location";
var L_Versions_Text="Version History";
var L_WorkOffline_Text="Connect to Client";
var L_Reply_Text="Reply";
var L_ExportContact_Text="Export Contact";
var L_ExportEvent_Text="Export Event";
var L_Reschedule_Text="Rescheduling Options";
var L_Move_Text="Move";
var L_Keep_Text="Keep";
var L_Delete_Text="Delete";
var L_Open_Text="Open";
var L_SiteSettings_Text="Change Site Settings";
var L_ManageUsers_Text="Manage Users";
var L_DeleteSite_Text="Delete Site";
var L_SiteStorage_Text="Manage Site Storage";
var L_MngPerms_Text="Manage Permissions";
var L_Settings_Text="Settings";
var L_Remove_Text="Remove from this list";
var L_ModerateItem_Text="Approve/reject";
var L_PublishItem_Text="Publish a Major Version";
var L_CancelPublish_Text="Cancel Approval";
var L_UnPublishItem_Text="Unpublish this version";
var L_DownloadOriginal_Text="Download Picture";
var L_EditVersion_Text="Edit";
var L_EditInOIS_Text="Edit Picture";
var L_Workflows_Text="Workflows";
var L_Send_Text="Send To";
var L_ExistingCopies_Text="Existing Copies";
var L_OtherLocation_Text="Other Location";
var L_GoToSourceItem_Text="Go to Source Item";
var L_NotifyThisIsCopy_Text="This item was copied from another location and may be receiving updates from there. You should make sure that the source stops sending updates or this item may get recreated.\n\n";
var L_SendToEmail_Text="E-mail a Link";
var L_DownloadACopy_Text="Download a Copy";
var L_DocTran_Text="Convert Document";
var L_AddToMyLinks_Text="Add to My Links";
var L_AddToCategory_Text="Submit to Portal Area";
var L_VS_DownArrow_Text="Select a View";
var L_ModifyView="Modify this view";
var L_CreateView="Create a new view";

SharePoint Backup Restore

2009-05-22T02:30:00.001-07:00

To migrate a sharepoint site from one server to another server follow these steps

1. Log into the SharePoint server using an account that has admin rights (or relevant permissions) to the SharePoint server and SQL Databases
2. if stsadm is not recognised in your command prompt, go to the 12 hive directory, for me stsadm is found at the location cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN and run stsadm from this folder
3. Create a new web application using central admin in the server where you want to restore the backup - http://CENTRAL-ADMIN-URL-GOES-HERE/_admin/extendvs.aspx
4. No need to create a Site Collection

Using command prompt type the following line to backup

stsadm -o backup -url http://sharepointsite/ -filename c:\sharepointsitenamebackup.bak -backupmethod full

Use the following line to restore, WARNING - Using overwrite as per the command below will delete any existing site that you have on the url that you are restoring to!

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN>stsadm -o restore -url http:// -filename c:\sharepointsitenamebackup.bak -restoremethod overwrite

To check the version of your SharePoint site use the url http:///_admin/FarmServers.aspx.

If you get the error below, it is because you have an older version from the server where you have copied the backup from..

"Your backup is from a different version of Windows SharePoint Services and cannot be restored to a server running the current version. The backup file should be restored to a server with version '12.0.0.6219' or later." - See this site for info on this http://www.allbhu.com/Global/Default.aspx?tabid=88&EntryID=3

The form has been closed. Xmlformview web part

2008-11-12T04:26:00.000-08:00

When addding the xmlformview web part to a sharepoint page, you may get an error that fills the full page saying "The form has been closed". Since this error fills up the full page you will not be able to edit the properties of the web part that you have just added.

To fix this problem follow the steps below.

1. Navigate to the page library where the web part page is located
2. Click on the options on the page and click "Edit Properties"
3. At the bottom of the properties page, click on "Web Part Page Maintenance".
4. Using the web part maintenance page close the xmlformview web part
5. Go back to the page where you added the web part and click on add a webpart
6. Instead of choosing the xmlformview web part from the web part list click on advanced and select the xmlformview web part from the "Closed Web parts" list
7. Now the web part would be added and the web part properties displayed
8. Edit the web part properties and add the url of the infopath form in the xsn location field in the Data category
9. In the Feature Catergory set the editing status dropdown value to "editing"

Other websites recommend you to add the xmlformview web part again from the main list after closing the web part that you added first but that did not work for me.

Console Configuration File Error: XML Exception: Object reference Sharepoint

2008-11-11T01:31:00.000-08:00

If you get the error below in your event viewer
Console Configuration File Error: XML Exception: Object reference not set to an instance of an objet

and the message Object reference not set to an instance of an object! at the area where you would expect your page editing toolbar then the reason is that the xml files in Editing Menu folder in the Master Page gallery are not in the Published state.

To fix this, just publish all the xml files in the folder Editing Menu and approve them!

Customising Ontolica Search

2008-09-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

As you know when you instal Ontolica on a Moss box it overrides the default sharepoint delegate search control with ID "SmallSearchInputBox", this is the searchbox that we are customising below.

To customise ontolica search, i.e. to change the search magnifying image button or to change the css classes you just need to modify the xslt file that ontolica uses.

This can be found in the location RootSite/OntolicaStyles/Forms/Allitems.aspx and open the folder SearchBox and edit the default.xslt file in here...you can change the images, change the borders around the search boxes etc.

You do not need to do an IISRESET but it seems to take a while before the changes are reflected on the page so if it is a dev box do an IISRESET to see the changes immediately.

SharePoint Search Customisation (Ontolica)

2008-09-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

If you want to modify the basic search in SharePoint just edit the properties in the SearchArea.xml file located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\OSearchEnhancedFeature and C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\OSearchBasicFeature

You can easily customise the Show Scope dropdown, show advanced search option, width of the textbox etc. Only a few properties are set in the xml file but more properties are available and can be added...have a look at the website below for a complete list of properties.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.portal.webcontrols.searchboxex_members.aspx

If you have installed ontolica search and want to modify the dropdown and advanced search option then you can do that by going to Site Actions - Site Settings - Modify All Site Settings - Ontolica Search Box Scopes and clicking on the settings button on the toolbar

Multiple levels of SharePoint menu

2008-09-18T09:07:00.001-07:00

By default only the main sites and sub sites are displayed in the top harepoint menu, if you want further level of sites to appear on the top navigation you just need to modify the SharePoint menu option in the master page.

Before doing this open the default master page in sharepoint designer and take a copy of it and play with the copy just in case if you mess it up can you always revoke back.
Edit the master page in Sharepoint designer and find the tag and change the contents of it to look something like below, the key value is the MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels changing it to 1 or more will give you additional sub menus

DynamicHorizontalOffset="0"

DynamicVerticalOffset="0"

StaticEnableDefaultPopOutImage="false" Runat="server"

DataSourceID="LeaveThisValueUntouched"

Orientation="Horizontal"

StaticDisplayLevels="2"

MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels="2" //this sets the number of levels

StaticSubMenuIndent="0" //you can indent the sub menu as you wish

ItemWrap="false"

SkipLinkText="<%$Resources:cms,masterpages_skiplinktext%>"

CssClass="topNav">

Save the modified master page and that's it!

If you have taken a copy and have changed the copy then you need to go to Site Settings - Master Page option in your sharepoint site and from the drop down choose the new master page.

keywords: dynamic menu sharepoint, multi level menu, advanced menu, top navigation sharepoint

Sharepoint site templates

2008-09-16T07:18:00.001-07:00

When creating a new sub site in SharePoint, you can restrict users on what kind of site template they can use to create the sub site.

You can specify which individual site templates users can see when they create sub sites, for instance you can enable just the publishing site template so that all subsites are of type publishin site.

This option can be set by modifying the Root level site settings and choosing the option "Page Layout and Site Template Settings" under the heading "Look and Feel".

Adding a pdf icon to MOSS 2007

2008-09-16T06:31:00.000-07:00

MOSS 2007 does not display icons for pdf documents OTB.

To add this icon follow the steps below

1. Download a pdf icon, there are a few ones on the site, for consistence sake choose the one with a 16 x 16 resolution, http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html
2. Save the icon to 'C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\Images' folder
3. Edit DOCICON.XML found in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML
4. Add the line to the document and save it

XmlFormView used in a Sharepoint Environment Error

2008-08-07T08:33:00.000-07:00

When following the tutorial on deploying an infopath form in asp.net web page into sharepoint you might get the strangest of errors saying

"The type 'Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.XmlForm' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced."

If you get this ensure that the web.config file for the SharePoint contains the Infopath Assemblies

-----web.config ----

---web.config----

This is the url that walks thru the hosting of the infopath forms in a custom page. Please be aware that the tutorial only caters for situations where you are hosting the .net page in the root site collection.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa701078.aspx#infopathxmlformviewcontrolcustomwebpage_deployingnonroot

Using query string with InfoPath forms

2008-08-07T03:49:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it is necessary to accept query string for browser enabled info path forms. This can be done by hosting the Infopath form in a asp.net page and hosting that page within Sharepoint using the XmlFormView class.

This technical guide explains the process

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/aa701078.aspx

The code behind for the asp.net page will contain a method like the one shown below..

protected void XmlFormView1_Initialize(object sender, InitializeEventArgs e)
{
string positionAppliedFor = Request.QueryString["Position"];
string jobID = Request.QueryString["JobID"];
string appURL = Request.QueryString["AppURL"];

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(positionAppliedFor) && (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(jobID)))
{
// Create an XPathNavigator positioned at the root of
// the form's main data source.
XPathNavigator xNavMain = XmlFormView1.XmlForm.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();
// Create an XmlNamespaceManager and add the "my" namespace
// alias from the form's main data source.
XmlNamespaceManager xNameSpace = new XmlNamespaceManager(new NameTable());
xNameSpace.AddNamespace("my", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003/myXSD/2008-07-08T12:49:29");
// Create an XPathNavigator positioned on the form's field2.
XPathNavigator fTextBoxPosition = xNavMain.SelectSingleNode(
"/my:myFields/my:gpRecommendation/my:txtPositionAppliedFor", xNameSpace);
// Set the form's job Position Value to the value passed in the query strings
fTextBoxPosition.SetValue(positionAppliedFor);

XPathNavigator fTextBoxJobID = xNavMain.SelectSingleNode(
"/my:myFields/my:gpRecommendation/my:txtJobID", xNameSpace);
fTextBoxJobID.SetValue(jobID);

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(appURL))
{
XPathNavigator fTextBoxAppURL = xNavMain.SelectSingleNode(
"/my:myFields/my:gpRecommendation/my:txtAppURL", xNameSpace);
fTextBoxAppURL.SetValue(appURL);
}
}
}

Installing SharePoint on a simple farm

2008-08-07T01:41:00.001-07:00

Very comprehensive guide on installing SharePoint on a simple farm

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262243.aspx

Validating Currency fields regular expression

2008-08-07T01:14:00.001-07:00

Expression: ^\d{0,2}($|\.\d{0,2}$)
Example of valid values:
20.09
1.99
1.2
3
.5

Example of invalid values:
120.09
1.991
x

Validating Custom Web Part Properties - the proper way!

2008-05-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

Adding validation to custom web part properties (the proper way!) Thanks Ken Josling for this info!

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
using System.IO;
using System.Resources;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;

namespace YourNamespace
{

public class YourWebPart : System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart
{
private bool invalidConfiguration;
private string exceptionMessage;
private ResourceManager resourceManager;

public YourWebPart()
{
invalidConfiguration = false;
exceptionMessage = string.Empty;
resourceManager =
new ResourceManager("YourNamespace.Resource", GetType().Assembly);
}

private void invalidateConfiguration(string message)
{
invalidConfiguration = true;
exceptionMessage = message;
}

protected void AddInitializeControl()
{
bool hasRights = ((ISecurableObject)SPContext.Current.Web).DoesUserHavePermissions((SPBasePermissions)Microsoft.SharePoint.SPPermissionGroup.WebDesigner);

if (!hasRights)
return;

string editLink = Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.ToolPane.GetShowExtensibleToolPaneEvent(string.Format(@"'{0}'", this.UniqueID));
this.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(
string.Format(exceptionMessage + resourceManager.GetString("WebPartHelpMessage"), editLink.Replace(@"ExtensibleView", @"Edit"))
));

}

protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
//Add your validation logic here
if(x)
{
invalidateConfiguration(resourceManager.GetString("SomeErrorMessage"));
}
if (y)
{
invalidateConfiguration(resourceManager.GetString("SomeOtherErrorMessage"));
}

if (invalidConfiguration)
{
AddInitializeControl();
}
else
{
//Render Web Part Here
}
}

protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
{
base.Render(writer);
}
}
}

Trying to use an SPWeb object that has been closed or disposed and is no longer valid

2008-05-12T07:05:00.000-07:00

Trying to use an SPWeb object that has been closed or disposed and is no longer valid

When you get the error message above it is most likely that you have got a reference to the SPWeb object by using the SPContext as shown below

SPWeb web = SPContext.Current.Web;

There is no problem with using this method but you need to make sure that you do not close or dispose this SPweb object becase the SPContext.Current.Web is used by the Page and all the controls on the page.

So you should not use this web object in Using statements also.

Working with SharePoint Groups

2008-04-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

This is a nice article that talks about working with SharePoint groups programmatically.

The only problem I had was I had to replace the lines
SPRoleDefinitionBindingCollection roleDefBindings = roleAssignment.RoleDefinitionBindings;

with SPRoleDefinition and added this role definition directly to the SPweb as shown below

SPRoleAssignment roleAssignment = new SPRoleAssignment((SPPrincipal)group);
def = web.RoleDefinitions["Full Control"];
roleAssignment.RoleDefinitionBindings.Add(def);
web.RoleAssignments.Add(roleAssignment);
web.Update();

http://www.emptycache.com/blog/2008/04/18/working-with-users-and-groups-in-sharepoint-2007/

SharePoint Admin webservice

2008-04-22T08:22:00.001-07:00

The Admin web service that SharePoint exposes _vti_adm/Admin.asmx can be used to create new SharePoint Sites, etc..the catch is you cannot just append this webservice url to any sharepoint site but only to the web app that hosts central admin..

For instance if you have a number of SharePoint sites at the following ports
1. http://servername:1233/CollaborationSite
2. http://servername:4545/TeamSite
3. http://servername:1066 - Central Admin

To connect to the Admin webservice you cannot do something like http://servername:1233/_vti_adm_Admin/asmx but you have to use the port that Central Admin is hosted so it will be http://servername:1066/_vti_adm/Admin.asmx

Changing default text in Sharepoint

2008-04-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

When you try to edit SharePoint pages like AccessDenied.aspx that sit in the Layouts folder in Sharepoints 12 folder hive you will notice that the text is not stored there.

They just reference resource files that sit under Inetpub under the location C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\portnumber\App_GlobalResources\wss.en-US.resx

So to change the Access Denied message to Access has been Denied or something like that you just need to change the value of the property accessDenied_pagetitle

Error: Access has been Denied

Working with PDF's Dot Net

2008-03-27T10:40:00.001-07:00

The PDFSharp open source Dot Net classes make working with PDF's in .Net very easy.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfsharp

Create Page gives Access Denied error on Sharepoint

2008-03-07T06:55:00.000-08:00

Came accross this problem where users with Full Control rights of a Sharepoint site were getting the Access Denied message when they clicked on the "create page" button.

The reason was that the users who create pages need to have read rights to the "Master Page Gallery"!

Add custom Styles to Rich Text Editor Sharepoint - content editor web part

2008-03-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

To add custom styles to the Rich Text Editor in SharePoint (both the ones accessed through the content editor web part and the inbuilt page content web part), just add styles in the format ms-.ms-rteCustom-nameofclass to your css style sheet that your master page uses. It's as simple as that.

If you are not using custom master pages style sheets, then just add the styles in the format rteCustom-Title (rteCustom- should appear before the style name) to a stylesheet and upload the stylesheet css file to the style library of the site collection, then go to site settings - master page settings and choose the override style sheet option and point to the style sheet that you just uploaded to. That's it, now when you open the rich text editor in sharepoint, type in some text, highlight the text you typed and from the styles dropdown choose the style you want.

Example of custom style that would appear in the css class .ms-rteCustom-TitleRed{Font-family: arial;Font-size: 14pt;Color: Red;}

Set "Show Subsites" option in Sharepoint Modify Navigation to False

2008-02-19T09:12:00.000-08:00

Programatically set the "Show Subsites" checkbox in the Modify navigation section of a sharepoint site to false using the code below

spweb.AllProperties["__IncludeSubSitesInNavigation"] = "False";
spweb.Update();

Modify the Edit HTML Toolbar in Sharepoint

2008-02-15T02:52:00.001-08:00

Modifying the Edit HTML toolbar that appears in Sharepoint Publishing pages is very easy.

In your page layout you could add attributes like AllowFonts="false", AllowImages="false" and so on..here is an example of disabling fonts and html editing

That's it!

Publishing InfoPath Forms connecting to Webservices into Sharepoint

2008-02-15T01:20:00.000-08:00

The following applies to attaching a certificate to an infopath form and deploying it to sharepoint. This certificate is necessary because the infopath form that we use connects to an external webservice so "full control" level security must be applied to the form.

Thanks Kieran Toon for the below..:-)

To deploy an Infopath form to SharePoint with code behind publish the form to a common network location(the wizard will take care of this - first option on first screen). Have the administrator upload the form using Central Admin and then activate it for your site collection. This form will then appear a content type which you can use as you wish in any document or forms library

That is correct, forms with .Net enabled code can be deployed as web enabled forms but they need to be deployed through central administration.

http://spsfactory.blogspot.com/2007/01/walkthrough-publishing-administrator.html
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/8285b82e-19db-4408-859f-1430830fe0fb1033.mspx?mfr=true
BlackPearl now publishes the InfoPath form but this does not seem to be accomodated. Maybe there could be an option added to the wizard which would deploy the InfoPath form to central administration and performing the other actions needed.

Excellent pointer. From this information, it allowed me to find this excellent article - Creating InfoPath Form Templates That Work With Forms Services (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa945450(VS.80).aspx) which contains the following.

Note:
After publishing a browser-enabled form template that contains managed code to Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007, to Office SharePoint Server 2007 with InfoPath Forms Services, or to a shared location, the form template must be uploaded and approved by a server administrator before it will be allowed to run.
These other links were also pretty useful in understanding the limitations of Web Enabled InfoPath forms.

InfoPath features that are supported in InfoPath Forms Services (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/HA102040851033.aspx?pid=CH100211501033)
InfoPath 2007 features that are unavailable in InfoPath Forms Services (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/HA102105871033.aspx)

http://k2underground.com/forums/thread/18335.aspx

KB934525 Troubleshooting "Cannot start service SPAdmin on computer '.'."

2008-01-29T06:51:00.000-08:00

If when running the sharepoint upgrade wizard you get the error KB934525 Troubleshooting "Cannot start service SPAdmin on computer '.'." follow step 4 in the following link which is

"Option # 4

On the machine where psconfig failed to start the SPAdmin service run:
%commonprogramfiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN\psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force
Modify the service timeout values in the Registry:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control add/modify DWORD value ServicesPipeTimeout to 60000 (60 seconds)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control add/modify STRING value WaitToKillServiceTimeout to 120000 (120 seconds)
Restart the server machine.

"

This fixes the problem

http://blogs.technet.com/wbaer/archive/2007/10/15/kb934525-troubleshooting.aspx

Remotely Reboot server using Computer Management Console

2008-01-29T06:35:00.000-08:00

This is a very useful way of rebooting a server if you know the box is up and running but are not able to connect to it through remote desktop.

Thanks Priyabrata Lahiri (Priyo) http://blogs.msdn.com/priyo/archive/2007/11/20/remotely-reboot-windows-server-2003.aspx for pointing us to this resource..(The below is copied and pasted from the mentioned url)

1. Open Computer Management (Local)

2. In the console tree, right-click Computer Management (Local), and then click Connect to another computer.

3. In the Select Computer dialog box, click Another computer, type the name of the computer that you want to restart or shut down, and then click OK. You can also click Browse to search for the name of the computer.

4. In the console tree, right-click Computer Management (Remote computer name), and then click Properties.

5. On the Advanced tab, click Startup and Recovery.

6. Click Shut Down to open the Shut Down dialog box.

7. Under Action, select the actions you want to perform on the computer to which you are connected.

8. Under Force Apps Closed, select the circumstances under which you want to force applications to close when you shut down or restart the computer, and then click OK.

Note

• To open Computer Management, click Start, and then click Control Panel. Click Performance and Maintenance, click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Computer Management.

• You must be recognized as an administrator or a member of the

Save Site as Template Link does not appear in Sharepoint

2008-01-15T07:52:00.000-08:00

If the Save Site as Template link does not appear under the Look and Feel tab of site settings, then go to the site settings of the site that you want to save as a template and replace the page name to savetmpl.aspx.

for Example

Change http://ServerName/SiteName/_layouts/settings.aspx
to
http://ServerName/SiteName/_layouts/savetmpl.aspx

ListViewWebPart - Adding Announcements List programatically to sharepoint page

2008-01-15T07:36:00.000-08:00

While working with a listviewwebpart in sharepoint the name property should be set to the GUID of the List. The key thing to note is it i s not enough to set the value as GUID.Tostring() but as it is case sensitive it should be set as spListGuid.ToString("B").ToUpper();

The full code is below

ListViewWebPart listWebPart = new ListViewWebPart();
listWebPart.ListName = spListGuid.ToString("B").ToUpper();
webPartManager.AddWebPart(listWebPart, "RightColumnZone", 0);

Cannot open database requested in login '' Error in Moss 2007

2008-01-14T03:09:00.001-08:00

The error message below is displayed when trying to view a page in MOSS 2007 that is checked out by another user.

Server Error in '/' Application.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cannot open database requested in login 'MOSS2007_SSP1_DB_DEV'. Login fails.
Login failed for user 'EC\WMSPSGBWA001003$'.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Cannot open database requested in login 'MOSS2007_SSP1_DB_DEV'. Login fails.
Login failed for user 'EC\WMSPSGBWA001003$'.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[SqlException (0x80131904): Cannot open database requested in login 'MOSS2007_SSP1_DB_DEV'. Login fails.
Login failed for user 'EC\WMSPSGBWA001003$'.]
System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionPool.GetConnection(DbConnection owningObject) +437
System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.GetConnection(DbConnection owningConnection) +82
System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionClosed.OpenConnection(DbConnection outerConnection, DbConnectionFactory connectionFactory) +105
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.Open() +111
Microsoft.Office.Server.Data.SqlSession.OpenConnection() +621
Microsoft.Office.Server.Data.SqlSession.ExecuteNonQuery(SqlCommand command) +214
Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.SharedObjectStore.Initialize() +269
Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.SharedObjectStore.GetObject() +384
Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.SharedResourceProvider.Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ISharedObjectStore.GetObject() +122
Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.SharedApplicationCollection`1.GetValue(SharedResourceProvider sharedResourceProvider) +118
Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.SharedApplicationCollection`1.get_Item(SharedResourceProvider sharedResourceProvider) +30
Microsoft.Office.Server.ServerContext.GetApplication(String name) +174
Microsoft.Office.Server.ServerContext.GetApplication() +87
Microsoft.Office.Server.ServerContext.get_UserProfileApplication() +42
Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager.get_m_Site() +49
Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager.get_IsSiteAdmin() +62
Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager..ctor(ServerContext serverContext, Boolean IgnoreUserPrivacy, Boolean backwardCompatible) +348
Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager..ctor(ServerContext serverContext) +55
Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebControls.ConsoleUtilities.GetPageCheckedOutMessage(String userLoginName, String userName, String userEmail) +923
Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebControls.ConsoleDataSource.OnPreRender(EventArgs e) +1025
System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +77
System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +161
System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +161
System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +161
System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +161
System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +161
System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +161
System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +161
System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +161
System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +161
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +1360

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.42; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.42

Custom Styles appear in edit page tool bar in Sharepoint

2007-12-20T06:52:00.000-08:00

To add custom styles to appear in the Styles dropdown in a tool bar while editing a page in Sharepoint add the following to the controls.css file that can be found under Style Library/en-us/Core Styles/controls.css in sharepoint designer

.ms-rteCustom-AnyName1, .AnyName1
{
font-weight: bold;
font-family: Arial;
font-size: 14pt;
color: #8C0000;
text-transform: capitalize;
}

.ms-rteCustom-AnyName2, .AnyName2
{
font-weight: bold;
font-family: Arial;
font-size: 14pt;
color: #8C0000;
text-transform: capitalize;
}

System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x8001010A): Creating an instance of the COM component with CLSID {00020820-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}

2007-12-04T07:05:00.000-08:00

System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x8001010A): Creating an instance of the COM component with CLSID {00020820-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} from the IClassFactory failed due to the following error: 8001010a.

I got this error when working on an Excel Automation Process. Excel throws this error message which is not very useful at all. The same code was working on other servers but on 1 particular server I kept getting this error.

Solutions:

Reboot the server! To be more precise I killed the Process EXCEL in task manager and the application started working again. The error code 8001010a usually means that the application is busy so had a look on the task manager.

Visual Studio shows Dots for spaces

2007-11-19T03:27:00.000-08:00

Ctrl-R followed by Ctrl-W will enable/disable the feature in Visual studio which will show dots for spaces, very annoying.

Thanks thekua for the solution http://www.thekua.com/atwork/2007/03/21/visual-studio-2005-annoyances/

Pound Symbol £ does not appear correctly

2007-11-15T03:13:00.000-08:00

When typing in the £ symbol in the HTML editor it might not appear as expetced in the browser. For me it appeared as a box. There are 2 options around this..

1. Convert the value into a string with formatter currency
eg. double val = 5.5; val.ToString("c");

2. If hardcoding the html than use this Â£ for the Pound symbol.

Request Failed: Unable to connect to remote server" error

2007-11-13T05:52:00.000-08:00

When using the System.net.webclient class I recieved the error message "Request Failed: Unable to connect to remote server". The client had a proxy server so I thought maybe that was causing the problem and adding the proxy settings and it worked. And When I had a close look at I found out that If I added the proxy lines below, it still worked even though the proxy address is commented. I found this a bit wierd.

WebClient web = new WebClient();
WebProxy proxy = new WebProxy();
//proxy.Address = new Uri("*************:8080");
web.Proxy = proxy;

Even though I am creating an object of type Proxy I am not assigning the proxy address and it is working. But If comment the line //web.Proxy = proxy then it fails...I am not sure why.

ErrorInstalling IIS after .Net 2.0

2007-11-07T09:19:00.000-08:00

The error message below will be displayed when IIS is installed on a Windows XP machine that has .Net 2.0 already installed.

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.] System.Web.Hosting.ISAPIWorkerRequestInProc.GetServerVariable(String name) +1126 System.Web.Hosting.ISAPIWorkerRequest.ReadRequestHeaders() +121 System.Web.Hosting.ISAPIWorkerRequest.GetKnownRequestHeader(Int32 index) +126 System.Web.Hosting.ISAPIWorkerRequestInProc.GetKnownRequestHeader(Int32 index) +104 System.Web.HttpRequest.FillInHeadersCollection() +30 System.Web.HttpRequest.get_Headers() +55 System.Web.Security.CookielessHelperClass.GetCookielessValuesFromHeader() +16 System.Web.Security.CookielessHelperClass.Init() +23 System.Web.Security.CookielessHelperClass.RedirectWithDetectionIfRequired(String redirectPath, HttpCookieMode cookieMode) +13 System.Web.Security.FormsAuthenticationModule.OnEnter(Object source, EventArgs eventArgs) +226 System.Web.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +92 System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +64

The fix is to run C:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis.exe -i in your command prompt.

Thanks aoporto for this fix..http://support.infogenium.com/forums/26/ShowPost.aspx

Reading from an Excel Sheet and inserting into a Custom List in Sharepoint

2007-10-23T08:06:00.001-07:00

//Add reference to using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel;

Application ExcelObj = new Application();
Workbook workBook = null;
Worksheet ws = null;

workBook = ExcelObj.Workbooks.Open(_tempFileName, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing,
Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing);

ws = new WorksheetClass();
ws = (Worksheet)workBook.ActiveSheet;

Range range = ws.get_Range("A" + i.ToString(), "J" + i.ToString());

System.Array myvalues = (System.Array)range.Cells.Value2;

if (myvalues.GetValue(1, 1) != null)//Check that the row has data
{
String example1 = (string)myvalues.GetValue(1, 1);
String example2 = (string)myvalues.GetValue(1, 2);

..
..
..

//Insert into Sharepoint

SPWeb web = SPContext.Current.Web;
SPListItemCollection listItems = web.Lists[_sharepointListName].Items;

SPListItem newListItem = listItems.Add();
newListItem[ColumnName1] = example1;
newListItem[ColumnName2] = example2;
..
..
..
..
}

//After working with Excel it is important to close the procsses that Excel uses other wise in your task manager you will find loads of Excel processes without being closed, the following method does a complete close down of all excel processes

private void ReleaseResources(Application ExcelObjk)
{
try
{
if (ws != null)
Marshal.ReleaseComObject(ws);

if (workBook != null)
{
workBook.Close(false, false, Type.Missing);
Marshal.ReleaseComObject(workBook);
}

if (ExcelObjk != null)
{
ExcelObjk.Workbooks.Close();
ExcelObjk.Quit();
Marshal.ReleaseComObject(ExcelObjk);
}
CallGarbageCollectorToCleanupReleasedMemory();
}
catch (Exception x)
{
…
}
}

private void CallGarbageCollectorToCleanupReleasedMemory()
{
GC.Collect();

//The bottom 2 lines are unnecessary and very dirty but can be used in worst case scenarious when you absolutely have to, have included here just to give an idea that this is possible

Process[] processes;
processes = System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcessesByName("Excel");
foreach (Process p in processes)
p.Kill();
}

Error 1920.Service Active MQ failed to start When installing Vamosa

2007-10-22T02:04:00.000-07:00

When installing Vamosa If you recieve "Error 1920.Service Active MQ (ActiveMQ) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services", check the log file under c:\vamosa\activemq\bin\wrapper.log and you will notice that you will see an error message like

STATUS | wrapper | 2007/10/22 09:26:11 | Launching a JVM...
FATAL | wrapper | 2007/10/22 09:26:11 | Unable to execute Java command. The system cannot find the file specified. (0x2)
FATAL | wrapper | 2007/10/22 09:26:11 | "%JAVA_HOME%\bin\java" -
FATAL | wrapper | 2007/10/22 09:26:11 | Critical error: wait for JVM process failed..

This is because a new environment variable has to be created called "JAVA_HOME", this should point to the root folder of where your JDK is installed.

A Dummies guide to Creating a custom Web Part for SharePoint Server 2007

2007-10-12T03:46:00.001-07:00

We have put together simple but important things about the development and deployment of web parts for Sharepoint server 2007.

1. Download the SharePoint Add on for Visual Stuido, this will create new templates so when you click on New Project in Visual Studio you will see new project types like "WebPart http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=19f21e5e-b715-4f0c-b959-8c6dcbdc1057&DisplayLang=en

2. Sharepoint web parts can be treated like Custom Server Controls in .Net. The difference is SharePoint references are added automatically when you create a new web part project and deploying to SharePoint is as easy as pressing F5.

3. Use the SharePoint object model classes like SPWeb, SPContext, SPListItemCollection and SPListItem to work with lists in Sharepoint. This way there is no need to add a web reference to the web service that is exposed by SharePoint.

4. Deploying - If Sharepoint is installed on the development machine then pressing F5 will automatically add the webpart in the GAC, mark the webpart as safe in the sharepoing web.config files and import the .dwp file into sharepoint. So to add the custom web part that we created, all we need to do is click Add web part and our custom web part should appear in the list of web parts along with other web parts.

5. When you run the project (F5) a setup.bat file is created in the Debug Folder or Release folder (depending on build type you do). Copy this folder accross to the server where you want to install this webpart and run the setup.bat file in the folder. Now this would do the steps mentioned in point 4 above so the webpart can be added to the sharepoint site by using the Add Web Part tab.

.Net Execution Timout - ThreadAbortException

2007-10-12T02:10:00.000-07:00

I had to create a custom web part that read a list of items from an excel sheet and upload it into sharepoints custom list. In that excel sheet there was a url field which pointed to pdf documents on the internet, so while uploading contents into the custom list I also had to download the pdf documents and add them to the custom list as attachments.

During this I noticed that a “system.Threading.ThreadAbortException: Thread was being aborted.” exception was being thrown approximately after the web part was running for 125 seconds. I found out that the system was throwing this exception and it was because by default .Net threads have an execution time out limit of 110 seconds. To fix this we need to modify the web.config file that Sharepoint uses. The following line needs to be replaced

with

The executionTimeout value should be set depending on the number of items in the excel sheet. Please refer to the support document below for information on this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928756.

The other thing to note is when the ThreadAbortException is thrown by the system you cannot catch it in a try catch. If you use a try catch it will go through the catch and at the end of the catch statement it will throw it again.

But if the ThreadAbortException is thrown by our code then we can abort it by using the class Thread.ResetAbort in the finally clause. More info on that can be found on
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/system.threading.threadabortexception.aspx

Converting HTTP Projects to FileSystem projects

2007-09-13T06:20:00.000-07:00

I wanted to change the solution type in visual studio from HTTP to File System and found this url very useful. http://vladan.strigo.net/Blog/tabid/71/ctl/ArticleView/mid/388/articleId/18/Convert-File-System-based-WebSites-to-be-HTTP-based.aspx

The ultimate Off-roader!

2007-08-22T05:15:00.000-07:00

At last I have bought the vehicle that I have been wanting to take to masinagudi for the past 15 years - the Gypsy! And no surprise I made full use of the gypsy in my first trip! Check the photos below..

Modified my Honda Civic

2007-08-22T05:14:00.000-07:00

I have done some face lifting to my honda civic in India, It was done by Kitup Rajiv.

Passing NameValueCollection to WebService

2007-08-21T08:05:00.000-07:00

There might be a need to pass in a NameValueCollection class object into a webService. Since you can only pass in serialized objects into a web service it is not a straight forward process. One of the ways to do it is to have a Class that stores the name value pair and add it to an arraylist object. Then pass the arraylist.ToArray() object to the webservice. The other way is to use a string array. I have shown the code to do it using a string array below.

This is the method that takes in a NameValueCollection and returns an Array
///

/// This Method converts the NameValueCollection of all the parameters
/// into an arraylist of string arrays
///

///
///
private Array ConvertNameValueCollectionIntoArrayList(NameValueCollection nvcParams)
{
ArrayList aList = new ArrayList();
string[] strNameValue;

IEnumerator paramsEnum = nvcParams.GetEnumerator();

int i = 0;
while (paramsEnum.MoveNext())
{
string name = nvcParams.GetKey(i);
string value = nvcParams[name];

strNameValue = new string[2];
strNameValue[0] = name;
strNameValue[1] = value;

aList.Add(strNameValue);
i++;
}
return aList.ToArray();
}

Now this Array can be passed into the web service and de-decoded as shown below..

------WebService----

//The ArrayListObject below is the array that contains the arraylist
[WebMethod]
[XmlInclude(typeof(string[]))] //This line is very important
public void Initiate(Object[] ArrayListObject, string .....)
{
ArrayList al = new ArrayList(ArrayListObject); ParameterValue[] Params = ConvertNameValueCollectionIntoParams(al);
..
..}

private ParameterValue[] ConvertNameValueCollectionIntoParams(ArrayList nvp)
{
ParameterValue[] parameters = new ParameterValue[nvp.Count];
for (int i = 0; i < nvp.Count; i++)
{
ParameterValue parameter = new ParameterValue();
string[] strNameValuePair = (string[])nvp[i];
parameter.Name = strNameValuePair[0];
parameter.Value = strNameValuePair[1];
parameters[i] = parameter;
}
return parameters;
}

Quick Tips C#

2007-08-14T03:20:00.001-07:00

This post will contain a list of quick tips and good practices in c# that I use..I will be updating this list as I find new things...If you have anything that you would like to contribute, please post them in the comments...cheers

1. Use string.IsNullOrEmpty() - short and sweet to check whether a string is null or empty

2. goto keyword, this is a very useful keyword that can be used to skip certain lines of code in a method - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/13940fs2(VS.71).aspx

Highlighting Row in GridView

2007-08-13T03:49:00.000-07:00

I recently had a situation where I had to highlight a row in the gridview if the value of the column Today was 0. Found out there was a very easy way to do it using the OnRowDataBound Event of the GridView, the code's below..

protected void GridViewID_OnRowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{
GridViewRow row = e.Row;
if (row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)
{
DataRowView drv = row.DataItem as DataRowView;
string fieldName= drv["FIELDNAME"].ToString();
if (fieldName.Equals("0"))
row.CssClass = "YourCssClassName";
}
}

DataFormatString - Formatting Data in a GridView -HTMLEncode to false

2007-08-13T03:35:00.000-07:00

The data in a datagrid can be formatted using the DataFormatString. For example you can add a £ sign or make sure the numbers are formatted to 2 decimal points and so on. The link below gives you a reference list of the things you can do but the most important point is, you need to set the HtmlEncode Property to false, or else you will not get the desired results. This one can get you because it is not stated clearly anywhere and spent half an hour trying to figure out why it wasnt working!

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.ui.webcontrols.boundfield.dataformatstring.aspx

Programmatically Adding Columns to GridView

2007-08-13T02:23:00.000-07:00

There are cases where you might want to use the same GridView to display diferent columns in a page. This is possible by programmatically adding the columns using the BoundField Object. The key thing to note here is the diference in adding a column to a DataGrid and a GridView, to add a bound column in the DataGrid you should use the BoundColumn object and to add a column to the GridView, you should use a BoundField object. You can create the gridview in your .aspx page and set the sorting and things like that or you can create the complete gridview in your code behind using the GridView class.
The code below shows how to add columns to a gridview that was created in the .aspx page..

--.aspx page--

AllowPaging="True" AllowSorting="True" PageSize="21" EmptyDataText="No data available."
CssClass="gridstyle" GridLines="None" OnSorting="GridViewID_Sorting" OnPageIndexChanging="GridViewID_Paging"
Width="100%">

--.cs page--

private void DefineGridViewColumns()
{
BoundField column = new BoundField(); //You can use the TemplateField object to add a template column
column.HeaderText = "XX";
column.DataField = "ID";
column.SortExpression = "ID";
column.HeaderStyle.CssClass = "titletext";
column.ItemStyle.Width = Unit.Percentage(7);
GridViewID.Columns.Add(column);

column = new BoundField();
column.HeaderText = "RANK";
column.DataField = "RANKNO";
column.SortExpression = "RANKNO";
column.HeaderStyle.CssClass = "titletext";
column.ItemStyle.Width = Unit.Percentage(7);
GridViewID.Columns.Add(column);

if (TimeSpan.Equals("TW"))
{
column = new BoundField();
column.HeaderText = "THIS WEEK";
column.DataField = "XX_TARGET";
column.SortExpression = "XX_TARGET";
column.HeaderStyle.CssClass = "titletext";
column.ItemStyle.Width = Unit.Percentage(10);
GridViewID.Columns.Add(column);
}
}

Error "The permissions granted to user '\IUSR_' are insufficient in Reporting Server

2007-08-01T01:49:00.000-07:00

If you get this error "The permissions granted to user '\IUSR_' are insufficient for performing this operation." when you work with Reporting Server, it is because the reporting server's virtual directories under IIS is running in 'Annonymous Mode'. To fix this open IIS, right click on the virtual directory that your report server uses, click on the tab 'Directory Settings' and click edit under 'Authentication and Access Control' and untick the 'Enable Anonymous Access'.

Issues with Integrating SharePoint 2007 and SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services

2007-07-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

While installing the Reporting Services add on for SharePoint 2007, the reporting services section does not appear on the SharePoint Central Administration Console if not installed by a user with the needed rights. The installation wizard would give you a installation successful message and the required files also seems to appear in the installation folder. The reason for this is that the user installing the add on should have domain access rights and should be a Web Farm Administrator and Site Administrator.