There are occasions when the master page that is attached to a site is not valid. The master page connection is made with a URL, and if that URL isn’t valid, you will get errors like: File not found (This is SharePoint saying that the master page itself is not found.) / cannot be opened…
This one was suggested to me by my friend and colleague Mike Koffman. He always tries to take the time to go to Advanced in the Modify Web Part panel and take away the user’s ability to "close" the web part. Here’s the story why. In working on other people’s sites in SharePoint, I’m often…
Many of the gradients that you see in the default SharePoint branding (that dreaded blue and orange that everyone wants to change) are created by using an image that is the appropriate height and one pixel wide. The images are used as the background-image in the various CSS classes with background-repeat set to repeat-x. This…
If you’ve been using Office 2007 on a Vista machine for as long as I have, you may have just gotten used to the extra credential prompts when you open Office documents from SharePoint 2007. Well, Microsoft considers this a "known issue", but it’s not clear when it may be resolved for good, though it…
Serge van den Oever wrote this MSDN article about the functions that are available in the ddwrt namespace. He wrote it for SharePoint 2003 and posted it to MSDN in October 2005, but I’ve never found a newer or better reference for MOSS. I’ve used Serge’s postings many times to help solve challenges, and I…
In a recent post, I pointed out a way to roll up calendar entries using the Data View Web Part (DVWP). That approach works if you have a fixed set of calendars for which you’d like to display the roll-up. But what if you’d like the roll-up to be dynamic, i.e., have it display events…
Especially when you are using Data View Web Parts (DVWPs), but anytime you are using a Web Part that allows custom XLS to control display, you may want to do a test on dates. Doing this is relatively easy if you know a few of the ddwrt namespace date functions. In this example, let’s say…
There is no dearth of opinion on this topic, whether it be from Microsoft or any of the many, many vendors out there who want to help you justify, plan, design, implement, or support (or paint, or count, or whatever) your SharePoint installation. So, I thought it would be absolutely critical for me to toss…
The idea of rolling up calendars across multiple SharePoint sites comes up very frequently in conversations with clients. We’ve always tried to think of a nice, elegant way to make it work, but haven’t ever really come up with the “right” answer. I saw a post on SharePointPedia today that looks to be that “right”…
One of the most powerful features of SharePoint 2007 (MOSS), in my opinion, seems to be one that doesn’t get a lot of attention in the blogosphere: Content Types. From a Knowledge Management or Content Management perspective, Content Types are a huge benefit. Not only do Content Types allow you to define metadata (columns) that…