SharePoint Designer Check-in error

While trying to perform a check-in on an existing checked-out page in the “Pages” library of a publishing site, I fell prey to this error.

“SharePoint Designer cannot perform this operation. The file is no longer checked out.”

Got it fix by deleting the cache files located at here:

“%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Web Server Extensions\Cache”

Remove the Group Label from the “Group By” List Views

This had to be simple java-script, so a quick search on the internet returned me a 2011 Blog post by “Alexander Bautx” which works “AS-IS”. I had to just replace the single-quotes (‘) by deleting and inserting it back again for all of it’s existence, and that’s it. Probably it was due to the copy-paste formatting issue. I have highlighted the change below, which appears at 4 places in his code.

But this was awesome!! Kudos to Alexander.

Note: You may not need the first line reference for the jquery, if you already have it in your master page.

$(this).find("a:last")[0].nextSibling.nodeValue = '';

Export Term Store to csv using PowerShell

This is another approach towards exporting the term stores to a CSV file format using power shell. I have tried to modify and enhance my previous post to achieve this requirement of generating a  Microsoft Excel format.

So here it is.

#creating a header-row for the csv file

"termStore `t" + "termGroup `t" + "termGroup-LastModifiedDate `t" + "termSet `t" + "termSet-LastModifiedDate `t" + "termSetGUID `t" + "terms `t" + "termsGUID `t" + "terms-LastModifiedDate" >> C:\ExportTermStore.csv

$termSet = Get-SPTaxonomySession -Site http://mydomain/sites/cthub
$termStore = $termSet.TermStores[0]
$termStore.Groups | FT -Autosize Name
$termGroup = $termStore.Groups["myTermStoreGroupName"]   #This is the case when we know the name of the group and want just that. We can also have a foreach instead, to loop-through each of the TermStore Group. I chose the first.
$termStore = $termStore.Name #saving the termStore “Name” in the variable $termStore
$termGroup.TermSets | FT -Autosize Name

foreach ($termGroups in $termGroup.TermSets)
{
  foreach ($termSets in $termGroups.Terms)
  {
    foreach ($terms in $termSets.Terms)
    {
      $termStore + "`t" + $termGroups.Name + "`t" + $termGroups.LastModifiedDate + "`t" + $termSets.Name + "`t" + $termSets.LastModifiedDate + "`t" + $termSets.ID + "`t" + $terms.Name + "`t" + $terms.ID + "`t" + $terms.LastModifiedDate >> C:\ExportTermStore.csv
    }
  }
}

Formatting Texts in a SharePoint List Item columns

This could be an old-school  thought of wanting to apply different formats to the values stored in list columns.

Well, one can definitely go a number of ways to achieve that, but here’s an approach when an end-user can drop some code in a calculated field to achieve this very easily and more precisely, getting to a number of different formatting styles.

Format 1: Displaying a Hyperlink Text in a calculated column

Create three columns in a list as below:

Column1: [ActualURL] of type “Single line of text”. (We will store values like “http://neerajch.blogspot.com” in this column)

Column2: [URLTitle] of type “Single line of text”. (We will store values like “NeerajCh” in this column)

Column3: [HyperlinkHTML] of type “Calculated”.

Type the below in the Formula box:

=CONCATENATE("<DIV><a href='",ActualURL,"'>",URLTitle,"</a></DIV>")

Select “Number (1, 1.0, 100)” in the [Data Type returned from this formula] section.

Leave the “Automatic” in [Number of Decimal Places].

That’s it. Hit OK and create one new list entry with values mentioned above. [Title] can be anything.

You should see something like this. Hurray !!!

Now that “Concatenated” formula piece can be a real handy and fruitful, if used wisely. Let’s see another small example.

Format 2: Displaying a Hyperlink Text in a calculated column as BOLD

With the same configurations for the list columns as above, we modify the formula to include <b> & </b> tags within the <DIV>.

=CONCATENATE("<DIV><b><a href='",ActualURL,"'>",URLTitle,"</a></b></DIV>")

And now you see something like this:

Wow, I know, you must be smiling. Nothing great here!! Just plain HTML. And that is my intent.

Let the things be as simple as they can be, for this has to be done by an end user not a developer/designer.

So the end users now have a great handy tool and can make it even powerful, if they can extract more complex HTMLs from their peer developers and embed here.

Export Term Store to xml using PowerShell

This seemed so obvious while using Central Admin, but soon I realized that there is so much left for SharePoint team at Microsoft to accomplish.

I needed to discuss the Site Taxonomy with my colleagues during our weekly call, when suddenly I found myself searching for the script that would do the magic.

TechNet has this:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/17874.sharepoint-2010-how-to-manage-the-term-store-via-powershell.aspx

Gary LaPointe has this:

http://blog.falchionconsulting.com/index.php/2012/03/exporting-and-importing-sharepoint-2010-terms/

Thanks to the above. This was sufficient for me to quickly get my script in-place:

Export-SPTerms  -Group (Get-SPTaxonomySession -Site "http://mydomain/sites/cthub").TermStores[0].Groups[2] -OutputFile "D:\CTHubExport\site_terms.xml" –Verbose

You probably will need to work with the parameters for TermStores[0] & Groups[2] to see that you are correctly referring to your Term Store and the needed Group within the TermStore.

This generated a beautifully formatted xml file.

Change position of the “Add new announcement” link

This wasn’t a surprise when it was thrown at me with “Please do not spend much time researching, if you have not already done it in past.”.

The question from the stake-holders was “Does anyone know how to move the ‘add new item’ link at the bottom of lists to the top of the list? (it becomes hard to see and requires scrolling down when many items are added to a list).”

Since I had done that very recently, I came up with a quick solution for her as below:

The above highlighted link was moved to top as shown below:

This was easily achieved by placing some JQuery code within a hidden content editor on the page this was needed. Although this would move every “Add New…” links on that page, but my stake-holder had no issue with that. She wanted just that. Bingo !!!

Here’s is what you need to use:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
      $(document).ready(function () {
             $("td.ms-addnew").parent().parent().parent().each(function () {
             $(this).insertBefore($(this).prev());
      });
});

</script>

Display “Upload Document” button on any web part page

So my client got a little too fancy about having a way to upload documents from anywhere on “a site”, to a particular document library available within that site.

Referring to the SharePoint way of uploading documents as below, I was made to run for a solution that would allow them to add this functionality to any web part page.

This wasn’t that bad of a thought. Well, at the end it got out to be quite straight forward, if you are happy and comfortable with java-script.

This is what was done, to allow them quickly add a script in a content editor and display a huge button like this:

Now the code:

<div class="ms-uploadbtnlink">
  <button onclick="javascript:OpenNewFormUrl(&#39;Documents/Forms/upload.aspx&#39;);return false;" type="submit">
    <nobr>
     <img alt="Upload Document" src="/_layouts/Images/uploaddoc.png"/>&#160;<span>Upload Document</span>
    </nobr>
  </button>
</div>

Thanks for reading!

Displaying custom User Name in the Welcome Menu

I have seen so much content about approaching this problem in several ways, which to me are kind of solutions that they either:

-Force you to spend un-necessary long man-hours,

-Write too much of custom codes (writing user controls, etc.),

-Makes you try to understand the Welcome.ascx user control (really?? why? Microsoft has already done that).

So eventually, I ended up writing this post for the benefit of all.

SharePoint is an awesome “PLATFORM”, yes, I call it a platform. Not a Tool, or Application or a CRM or a portal, or a …. and the list goes on. By calling it a platform, I am encapsulating all of them together.

So, with so many stuff already provided out-of-box, we only need to know how to leverage them in a best possible manner to our benefits.

By leveraging, I also mean utilizing the excellent work that is being done by one of the Microsoft’s biggest community, the SharePoint community. You’ll find tons & tons.

The one such work that I am referring to is the SharePoint Services Library on CodePlex. Please find it here.

By using this, I have gotten to get this working in the most minimal way that I could find. Below are the pieces of the code that you would need to get your Welcome menu read aloud “Welcome Tango Charlie”. Pre-requisites being that you have a properly configured User Profile (and of course, if your name is Tango Charlie).

Okay, so we are going to modify our SP 2010 Master Page and place some lines of code in the <head> section.

Step 1: You may download the .js file and insert a script reference to the SPServices library within your <head>…</head> tags:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/scripts/jquery-1.4.2.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/scripts/jquery.SPServices-0.7.2.min.js"></script>

Pre-requisites:

a) You should make sure that you have a JQuery script references before referring to SPServices.

b) Refer the SPServices on CodePlex as the JQuery version requirements are strict for what version of SPServices you are using.

Step 2: Place the below script anywhere within your <head>…</head> tags as long as they follow the tags mentioned in Step 1.

<!-- Format the Welcome Menu -->
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
        $(function() {
            var userFirstName = $().SPServices.SPGetCurrentUser({
                fieldName: "FirstName",
                debug: true
            });

            var userLastName = $().SPServices.SPGetCurrentUser({
                fieldName: "LastName",
                debug: true
            });
           
            var displaySection = $('span.ms-welcomeMenu').children('a.ms-menu-a').children('span');
            var textToShow = 'Welcome ' + userFirstName + ' ' + userLastName;
            // Set the text back to the Welcome Menu
            displaySection.text(textToShow);

          });

</script>

And that’s it. You have your name displayed with the “Welcome” prefix.

Try playing with the combinations/permutations of [fieldName: "FirstName"] and [fieldName: "LastName"] to get different text to display. Good Luck.

No item exists at http://servername/sitename/pagename.aspx?ID=88. It may have been deleted or renamed by another user

So, We have upgraded our MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010. One of the other challenges that we have been facing after this Database Attach process is that the links having query string parameters have started to fail (Surprisingly…..this error appears randomly on different links). The error it generates is : “No item exists at http://servername/sitename/pagename.aspx?ID=88. It may have been deleted or renamed by another user”

Well, as soon as I searched for this error, I got to see this Microsoft Support article having a resolution to this issue. You can find it here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972225

According to Microsoft, this is a know issue and this is what they suggest:

“Change the query string parameter from ID to CustomID. Then change the details page from QueryString(ID) to QueryString(CustomID). Once this is done the page will display with no errors.”

So, when I changed my link URLs to “http://servername/sitename/pagename.aspx?BID=88” everything worked fine.

But here are a couple of questions that has kept me wondering, and I am still looking for an answer to them:

#1. My 2007 sites work perfectly with this piece of code. So does that mean, this issue has been introduced in SP 2010?

#2. Even in 2010, not all the links with query string parameters (?ID=nn) are failing. Some seem to work. This seems very weird. Any answers to this?

Setting up SharePoint 2013 Development Environment - Part 5

This is the Part 5 of the series for setting up a development environment for SP 2013 on a VM. As we know, this is the latest release for the new Microsoft stack of products that involves Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012 and SharePoint Server 2013 (or SP 15).
In this part 5, we will focus on the configuration of the PowerPivot for SharePoint 2013 using the PowerPivot for SharePoint 2013 Configuration tool.

Let’s start the PowerPivot for SharePoint 2013 Configuration tool.

Bummer!!! – We have an Error on the very first step.

Why 14.0.0.0?? Please note that there are 2 versions of this tool as described here.

So we incorrectly ran the PowerPivot for SharePoint Configuration tool. (Note there is no 2013 here).

Let’s try again and run the correct version this time, PowerPivot for SharePoint 2013 Configuration tool.

Nope, still seeing the same error!

Okay, let us try to see the Configuration Tool screen right behind this error message:

Can this be a pointer to an incorrect version of SQL Server? Let’s verify this with the standard MSDN post here.

Here’s the image for a quick reference:

Hmm…. That looks weird. I have “2100.1”, whereas MSDN says “2853.0”.

Okay, got it. I actually forgot to install the SQL SP1 CTP4 feature. Let’s go back and install it now from location: (www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34700).

Once the install completes, start PowerPivot for SP 2013 Configuration Tool again.

You should be able to see this screen:

Click Ok. Next provide the appropriate Pass-Phrase and the PowerPivot Server for Excel Services Name:

See here if you want to learn more about this screen.

Then Click Validate. If you provided all correct information you’ll see the validation success message, Click OK. (Else follow the details on the error screen to fix the errors)

Click Run; click “Yes”, if you get a warning message:

This should start the process:

Once done, this completes the configuration process and it also completes this 5 Part series that I started almost a couple of weeks back.

Now you may go back to the creation of the SP Site Collection and start exploring the whole new world!!