Ben There, Done That

Thanks to a co-worker for this blog post – http://msfarmer.blogspot.com/2009/07/sharepoint-versions.html

It lists all of the updates for MOSS and WSS 2007 along with what version number the update is.  I’ve had several times when I’ve wanted to know exactly what version number went with which update and was never able to find a comprehensive list (I would always ask this co-worker if he knew

So, if you aren’t sure if an update fully installed (I’ve had it happen before) or you can’t remember the last update you installed into your farm, head over to the Microsoft Farmer blog and check it out!

First of all, I realize I’m a little behind on this post.  The truth is I started it over a week ago.  The day after I started it, I lost my access to TechNet.  It was a weird glitch with TechNet and I never found out what it was, but I was able to get to it again about 2 1/2 days later.  As Murphy’s law would have it, shortly after that I had computer problems that let to a format.  But finally, here it is:

Microsoft has add an stsadm reference on TechNet allowing you to “navigate through the stsadm commands with both WSS and SharePoint.  You can filter commands are not in the UI, which commands were new with SP1, SP2.  You can also view al the commands with a key that lets you see the same thing as the filters above.

The commands are also categorized so you can see which commands are available for Import and Export, General, Features and Solutions, etc.  But, enough with my babling, go check it out for yourself!!

WSS -  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/dd418924.aspx

MOSS – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/cc948709.aspx

I was working with a client over the last few days on building a Project Workspace site template.  We were nearly finished and had to make a couple last edits to a web part when we hit the JavaScript error.  When expanding the details of the error it was similar to:

line: 2135
Char: 4
Error: ‘style.display’ is null or not an object
code: 0

This error was keeping us from adding web parts and modifying current web parts (we could still delete web parts, but only by using http://url/default.aspx?contents=1 to get to our web part maintenance page).

I did some researching and thanks to this thread, I found this solution:

1)  Place page in edit mode
2)  Edit the content of the content editor web part by selecting the
‘modify web part’ drop down menu
3)  Select the Rich Text Editor and copy the text if you do not want
to lose it.
4)  Select Source Editor button, this opens the HTML source code for
the CE Web Part
5)  Remove the source code.  Our source code had a conflicting ID.
6)  Update CE web part and make sure source code does not have auto
generated code, or just add a new content editor web part.

The thread varies on what web parts people had on the page, in our case, we only had one content editor web part and then several list web parts.  Once we removed our single content editor web part, everything worked beautifully.

True to their word, Microsoft release SP2 for their Office suite today.  It includes SP2 for Office 2007, WSSv3 and MOSS 2007.  For a little more detail on the updates, SharePoint Joel has a great blog post.

Of, if you just prefer to go straight to the downloads the links are below:

Office 2007 SP2

Office 2007 Language Pack SP2

WSSv3 SP2

WSSv3 Language Pack SP2

MOSS 2007 SP2

MOSS 2007 Language Pack SP2 (x86)

MOSS 2007 Language Pack SP2 (x64)

I’ve found myself in an interesting spot lately, I think due to a few things.  The primary point this post will revolve around is my blog.  Lately I’ve found myself posting fewer blog entries and I’ve been speculating on the reason for this.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it is two point mainly.  Those two being twitter and the state of SharePoint.  I’ll go into a little more detail below.

1. Twitter – I’ve found myself getting wrapped up in the twitterverse.  Tonight I’ve been speculating on the user of twitter.  It definitely has it’s place, and there are lots of good things about it.  I started tweeting as lots of the SharePoint blog writers I follower were jumping on the twitter bandwagon.  This user base continues to grow, however, tweets become more and more frequent, with the SharePoint tweets growing farther apart in some cases.  I’ve been guilty of this as well.  It is easy to start tweeting about SharePoint, but as you use it more and more, other topics jump in, and before you know it you are tweeting about everything.  I find the new tweets I follow growing more and more cluttered and harder and harder to keep up with and sort the quality content out of.

So…with that speculation, I find myself tweeting instead of blogging more and more, but is my content getting lost within twitter and the massive amount of tweets?  Are people missing valuable content due to just not seeing it in twitter?  Am I “slacking off” in my blogging because of twitter and not delivering to my readers the content they want to see?

2. SharePoint – I think in addition to the growth of twitter, the state of SharePoint has caused few blog posts.  Not just by me, but by the SharePoint world in general.  SharePoint has reached that point where 2007 has been out for a while and 2010 is right around the corner.  There is so much information on SharePoint 2007, that there isn’t as much new and exciting content to post on, or new discovers and methodology that needs documenting.

With SharePoint 2010 right around the corner people are just waiting to get there hands on SharePoint 2010, but because it hasn’t been publicly released yet, there isn’t anything to blog about that isn’t shared thousands of times between twitter and blogs, just because of the lack of available content available for SharePoint 2010.

So, those are my thoughts about why I have found myself blogging less, the rise in twitter and the “wait” for SharePoint 2010 and lack of topics for SharePoint 2007 to blog about.  What does every one else thing?  I would love to hear your comments.

With that said, I hope to not abandoned my blog readers and only post content on twitter.  Hopefully I can pick it up a little bit more again with my blogging and continue to share valuable SharePoint information through it.

I’m a little late with posting this news, but I figured it never hurts to repeat it and get the information out to as many people as possible.

Yes, you read it correctly, SharePoint Designer is now free.  There were some rumors going around that it was an April Fools Joke by Microsoft, but 5 days later, it is still free, still available for download and definitely not a joke.  Here are some links that I gathered from Microsoft as well as various blogs that relate to SharePoint Designer and how it may effect your current SharePoint implementation.

SharePoint Designer Download

SharePoint Designer for free interview with Tome Rizzo (YouTube)

SharePoint Designer Governance

Locking Down SharePoint Designer in your Organization

Woody Windischman’s Blog Post on the release – The guy who wrote the book on SharePoint Designer

I had a client email me with an interesting dilemma a couple days ago.  He was working with a document library and uploading .docx files.  He was creating a group of Office 2007 files and Office 2003 files and uploading multiple files at once.  He emailed me saying that all the files were uploading but .docx files.  Sure enough, they weren’t uploading and no errors were being generated.

He emailed me a screenshot of the upload, and I noticed something strange.  The size of the Word document was 0 K.  I created my own blank Word document, saved it and uploaded it and it was 10 K.  Curious about the difference, I thought he had a corrupted or “bad” Word file.  Nope, it open just fine in Word, but was still 0 K.

Come to find out, he was right clicking on his desktop and selecting “New Microsoft Word Document”  I was going into Word and saving the open file.  The file created by right clicking on the desktop, is a valid Word file, but is missing some key info that was causing the upload to fail.

If you open a .docx file in WinRAR or WinZip, you’ll notice it is actually a collection of folders and XML files.  When saving a blank Word file from within Office, there are some default XML files that are created and added, however, when you create the file by right clicking your desktop, none of those XML files are created.  If you try to open such a file in WinRAR you get an invalid archive error as opposed to the folder and file structure you usually see within a .docx file.

The lesson, if you’re going to do testing with a blank Word document, create it from within Word and not by right clicking on your desktop.

Sadly, it’s true, Ballmer announced the other day that the next version of Office won’t be released until 2010. Despite all the rumor going around about the “14″ becoming a “2009″ it appears it will become 2010. You can read more about the announcement here.

Somasegar’s WebBlog post, http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2009/02/19/sharepoint-tools-support-in-visual-studio.aspx;, gives a great preview of the increased and additional support for SharePoint in the next release of Visual Studio

I finally got access to my Office Live Workspace today. I went to their site and pre-registered and wasn’t given access at the time. I was told I would be contact with an email when my space was set up. I still haven’t gotten the email, but I go back every once in a while to give it a try and finally got in! My first thought as soon as I gained access, was, this is SharePoint 2007 customized, so it sent me off on a search and got me my answer on the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog here. Office Live Workspace is indeed WSSv3 customized. The possibilities once you start developing on SharePoint are endless! I’m excited to see where Microsoft takes this as they continue to improve and update Windows Live Workspace, from what I’ve seen so far, I definitely give it a thumbs up.