I've had several people ask me about this one especially now that in 3.0/MOSS there is the top nav bar and breadcrumb trails. I'll have to give props to Todd Bleeker for the steps on this one.

The process uses a Content Editor Web Part to inject some CSS and alter the page and hide the Quick Launch bar. You won't need to know CSS though, the snippet is provided below.

1. Go to your site you want to hide the Quick Launch
2. Click Site Actions > Edit Page
3. Click the Add a Web Part in any section
4. Put a "Content Editor Web Part" on the page
5. Click "open the tool pane" on the new web part.
6. Click "Source Editor" and paste the below in the editor window:

7. Click Save.
8. In the tool pane expand Appearance and change the title to read "Hide Quick Launch"
9. Still in the tool pane under Appearance select NONE for the chrome type.
10. Click OK to get out of the tool pane and exit Edit Mode.

The "Title" column comes default on any list you are going to create in SharePoint, it's also by default a "Single line of text" type. This introduces problems if a) You don't want a Title column or b) you want that Title column to be a lookup or another column type.

If you have searched on how to remove the Title column from a SharePoint list you probably found a few articles on how to edit the "Item" content type to hide the Title column. This solves your issue if you just want to solve a) above. But you'll notice if you try to create a new column named "Title" with a different column type, say Lookup, you'll get an error that Title still exists.

I will quickly run through resolving both a) and b) if you still want "Title" but want it to be a different column type.

1. Go to Settings > List Settings > Advanced Settings on the list in question
2. Click YES to allow management of content types and click OK
3. You will now see the "Item" content type under "Content Types", click "Item"
4. Click on the Title column
5. Select the radio button to make "Title" Hidden and click OK.
6. (Optional if you want to make a new "Title" column under a different column type) Click Title again and then click "Edit column in new window". In that new window change "Title" to anything else, make sure "Require that this column..." is set to NO. And click OK. Close the new window and click OK on your main window.
7. You will now see Title is no longer there when you click "New"
8. You will want to go through any views you have and remove any references to the know hidden column. You can also now create a new column, name it "Title" and give it any column type you want.

So I upgraded my blog 2 weeks ago, promised more updates, and gave you none.

I've been spending time brushing up on my all-around MOSS knowledge for several reasons including taking the MCTS SharePoint exam (70-630), which I took and passed with a nearly perfect score earlier today.

What I want to touch on briefly today is the move from Exchange Public Folders to SharePoint. Once upon a time Exchange public folders were one of the best ways to store shared calendar events and a quick and easy way for users to store emails, files and contacts that could also be easily made available for offline use.

With the release of SharePoint 3.0 there is now no real advantage to using Exchange public folders, with all the functionality you see in public folders improved upon with the SharePoint features: email enabled document libraries, alerting, Outlook 2007 integration including data made available offline. Microsoft itself is endorsing SharePoint as its collaboration platform to replace public folders in the future.

If you are a heavy user of Public Folders there is no rush to migrate off to SharePoint as MS will continue to support public folders through at least the next major release after Exchange 2007. But small to medium implementations of public folders may want to look at migrating their content to SharePoint.

There are currently no migration utilities available from Microsoft to migrate existing public folder content to SharePoint, but there are several 3rd party apps that will make the conversion painless (eg: AvePoint, Quest). I recently demoed the Quest Public Folder Migrator for SharePoint and was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked.

The Quest utility provides many options I didn't even think about including linking the old Public Folder in the Outlook client to the new location where the data lives on SharePoint, even displaying the SharePoint page directly in Outlook. Once you have the software installed and the appropriate permissions where they need to be, the migration wizard steps you through choosing a target Public folder (calendar, folder, or folder tree) and a destination. There are options regarding how you want to handle the permissions and whether you want this to be a recurring schedule that keeps updating the SharePoint site when items are added to the Outlook side or if you simply want to delete the public folder for Outlook altogether.

Moving to SharePoint gives you an easier tool to administer, you can probably use existing team and project sites, and frees up some space on your mailstores: they always have a knack for running out of space, don't they?

I have upgraded my blog software and am still playing with the layout a bit think I have finalized the layout. I also added a new IM app on the side bar, try it out!

In addition I am hoping to add more content shortly; I have compiled a list of items I want to blog about so look for those over the next few days.

I am excited to see in the logs I am getting a lot of hits for searches on errors messages and issues and hopefully my posts are helping you out. Feel free to hit the comment button on a post and leave your feedback.

After a recent SharePoint migration from WSS2.0 to MOSS (database migration) I had one site that was giving the following error (screenshot below) when clicking "Fill out this form" in an Infopath form library:

(click thumbnail for full image)
The document could not be created. The required application may not be installed installed properly, or the template for this document library cannot be opened.

Read more »

SharePoint MOSS 2007 has introduced a great feature set in My Site and My Links. Unfortunately there seem to be some kinks in keeping the My Links in sync so they actually show you all the sites you are a member of.

I recently did a WSS2.0 to MOSS2007 database migration. The new server had MOSS installed well before the migration and it was used as a dev instance before moving the production databases over to it.

Here is the problem: after moving the prod DBs over and renaming the new server with it's PROD name all the My Links still pointed to sites using the dev url. Even new sites I added myself to would not show up under My Links.

Read more »

I recently had my PC start giving errors everytime I tried opening a MS Office document in Sharepoint (WSS2.0). It would cause IE to crash and gave the following error in the application logs:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Application Popup
Event ID: 26

Description:
Application popup: IEXPLORE.EXE - Application Error : The instruction at "0x30cb0d78" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be "written".

Thanks to visitor Kevin, I'm slightly modifying my solution:

At the following path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\

You will see one of the two possibilities:

1: office10 and office11 folders
2: office 11 and office12 folders

Copy the owssupp.dll file from the lower numbered office folder and paste it to the upper numbered folder e.g. copy the file from office11 and paste it to office12. Office12 will also have this file, just back up that file before the above procedure and save it somewhere on the disk, instead of overwriting it with the office11 file.

Now
1. Go to Start Menu
2. Run
3. Type regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OWSSUPP.DLL"
4. Click ok to the error message.

This worked for me instantly.

Another example of MS making it hard to quickly check what version of a software you are running.

Use the SQL script below to find your SMS sites service pack version level for SMS 2.0 or SMS 2003 sites.

SQL Query:

Select
SiteCode,
SiteServer,
SiteName,

'Version' = Case
When Version between '2.00.1239.0000' And '2.00.1239.0999'
Then 'SMS Version 2.0 RTM'
When Version between '2.00.1380.1000' And '2.00.1380.1999'
Then 'SMS Version 2.0 Service Pack 1'
When Version between '2.00.1493.2000' And '2.00.1493.2999'
Then 'SMS Version 2.0 Service Pack 2'
When Version between '2.00.1493.3000' And '2.00.1493.3999'
Then 'SMS Version 2.0 Service Pack 3'
When Version between '2.00.1493.4000' And '2.00.1493.4999'
Then 'SMS Version 2.0 Service Pack 4'
When Version between '2.00.1493.5000' And '2.00.1493.5999'
Then 'SMS Version 2.0 Service Pack 5'
When Version = '2.50.2726.0018'
Then 'SMS 2003 RTM'
When Version = '2.50.3174.1018'
Then 'SMS 2003 SP 1'
When Version = '2.50.4160.2000'
Then 'SMS 2003 SP 2'
Else 'Unable To Determine Service Pack!'
End

From Sites

Often software will request a certain service pack level or version of SQL Server. (IE: MOSS 2007 requires SQL 2005 SP2). There is no simple Help > About to see the version of SQL you are running.

For SQL Server 2000 and up, run the below query (2000 - open Query Analyzer, 2005 - right-click a DB and select New Query):

SELECT 'SQL Server '
+ CAST(SERVERPROPERTY('productversion') AS VARCHAR) + ' - '
+ CAST(SERVERPROPERTY('productlevel') AS VARCHAR) + ' ('
+ CAST(SERVERPROPERTY('edition') AS VARCHAR) + ')'

This will return your version. You can see the build charts for more detailed information:

SQL Server 2000 Build Chart
SQL Server 2005 Build Chart

When dealing with some large ldf log files I started investigating the best methods to backup/compact/just generally deal with them.

Since the "shrink database" command within SQL 2000 Enterprise Manager doesn't always seem to do what you'd expect, here is the command to run in Query Analyzer.

backup log db_name_here with truncate_only
dbcc shrinkfile(db_log_filename_here,truncateonly)

You could script this to run on a regular basis or just as a one-off while doing manual maintenance on your dbs.