Tag Archives: SharePoint - Page 5

Post-session material

Posted by on March 19, 2009 No comments

For those who followed my SharePoint introduction session on the Microsoft SMB Roadshow, here are some links that will help you evaluate Microsoft Office SharePoint Server or Windows SharePoint Services:

Versioning and Content Approval

Posted by on March 15, 2009 No comments

A lot of SharePoint users are confused about when to use Content Approval and Major/Minor versions. And indeed, some functionality seems to overlap, especially the fact that you can hide draft/pending items from users with read access to the list/library.

Some considerations:

  • Think about your user: the more advanced the options you activate, the more complicated it will be to have something published in the library. And what happens if it is complicated? Yes, the file ends up on the C: drive or in the e-mail.
  • Content approval can be interesting in lists, as you do not have Major/Minor versions in lists, only in document libraries.
  • If you are using Content Approval and you need to approve an item, you need manage list permissions. The Approve items is for Major/Minor versions, and has nothing to do with content approval!

Quotes from SharePoint Best Practices

Posted by on February 3, 2009 No comments

It is an amazing experience to attend the SharePoint Best Practices Conference in San Diego. MVP speakers, a beautiful location, and very interesting content.

It’s impossible to summarize what I learned until now in a blog post, but these quotes will give you an idea of what’s happening:

  • SharePoint is not about building software, it’s about building services.
  • The most difficult thing about SharePoint is the people thing.
  • Information that is hard to find, is hardly ever used.
  • Vista is Microsoft’s gift to Apple.

To avoid that some people lose their MVP status, I will not tell anybody who made the last statement.  :-)

Adobe PDF iFilter for 64-bit platforms

Posted by on December 9, 2008 No comments

Adobe has released their 64-bit version of the iFilter, that allows SharePoint Search to index the content of pdf-files.

You can download it here: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025

Excel Services with Excel 2003

Posted by on November 17, 2008 No comments

One of our customers is still running Office 2003, but wants to use Excel Services. There seems to be some confusion if this is possible or not. As far as I am concerned, it is very well possible, although there are some prerequisites, and some limitations. These are my observations from an end user perspective:

  • The files in SharePoint need to be in .XLSX or .XLSB format, it does not work with .XLS. You can install the Office File Converter pack, which will allow Excel 2003 to save files as xlsx. 
    I had some issues installing it, but installing Service Pack 3 of Office 2003 fixed all issues.
  • With Office 2003, you can not limit the display of the workbook in Excel services to a specific area (worksheet, named range…). It always displays the full workbook if you open the file in Excel Services. In the Excel Web Access web part, you can limit the display to a worksheet or a named range. 
  • Office 2003 can not work with parameters, that allow you to change certain values dynamically in the worksheet (e.g. using filter web parts). 

If you want to know more about Excel Services from an end user perspective, have a look at the Microsoft online training material.