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I recently got the below error message across all of my sites in a farm; every web part was displaying this message instead of the content. Very scary:

Web Part Error: One of the properties of the Web Part has an incorrect format. Windows SharePoint Services cannot deserialize the Web Part. Check the format of the properties and try again.

You'll quickly find the following MS KB article for the error message: KB 826786.

It boils down to SharePoint needing to work out of the WinDir\Temp and WinDir\System32\logfiles directories. Which may be a permissions issue as noted in the KB article.

This can also be caused by your virus scan software. For example, McAfee's On-Access Scanner may be blocking executables from being written to the Temp directory: SharePoint writes .dlls to temp which will be blocked, which would be blocked from functioning and cause the noted error.

So in short, if you are getting the above error message it might be a good first step to disable your virus scan and see if the message goes away, if it does work from there to readjust your virus scan settings.

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.

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.

I've been getting more and more emails and comments lately regarding posts on my blog solving their problems. And I really only have a few posts up!

It's great to hear my posts are helping and I promise I am going to be adding more content soon (I've been saving up some odds and ends for posting, but haven't gotten around to it).

One thing I hate is getting a specific error and not being able to find a solution on it, but finally you'll find something where a person paraphased the error message, etc. I always try my best to describe the situation and include specific errors. So hopefully this blog will help more in the future.

Stand by.