Home - SharePointHosting.com's - SharePoint Demystified

7/23/2009

"The specified file is not a valid spreadsheet or contains no data to import" Error When Importing an Excel Spreadsheet

When attempting to create a list from a spreadsheet you may run into the error:

"The specified file is not a valid spreadsheet or contains no data to import"

Here is the solution:

• In Internet Explorer click Tools --> Internet Options.
• Click Security --> click sites --> and add your site name. If you are currently using a URL from SharePointHosting.com, be sure to enter https://*.securespsites.com and http://*.securespsites.com.

Posted at 2:03 PM by System Account | Category: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/17/2009

Configuring Internet Explorer to Remember Your SharePoint Login Credentials

Sometimes a user may get tired of having to constantly enter their username/password when accessing a SharePoint site. By adding the SharePoint site to your "Local Intranet" zone, one can have Internet Explorer remember login credentials. Here are the steps:

Go to Control Panel
Go to Internet Options
Click the "Security" tab
Click "Local Intranet"
Click "Sites"
Click "Advanced"
Add your SharePoint site into the "Local Intranet" zone.
Click OK to confirm on all Internet Options screens.
Open up Internet Explorer and go to your SharePoint site. When prompted for username/password make sure you enter your credentials and check "Remember My Password".
Your username/password should now be passed to the SharePoint site automatically.

Posted at 4:39 PM by System Account | Category: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/21/2009

Our MOSS and SharePoint Developer Content

Our newly created MOSS and SharePoint Developer Blog has SharePoint Developer and MOSS centered content on topics such as:

Workflow

Configuration of Advanced MOSS Features

Development

SilverLight and SharePoint Integration.

Stay tuned!

Posted at 9:33 AM by Blog Administrator | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/5/2009

Announcing the Launch of MOSSHosting.com

SharePoint comes in all shapes and sizes, and SharePointHosting.com supports small and larger footprint deployments of WSS and MOSS. Our new site located a www.mosshosting.com supports enterprise sized deployments of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. We are also supporting three different deployment paradigms for our customers – hosted, federated and onsite managed services. Take a few minutes to check out new site and let us know how we can help.

Posted at 12:06 PM by Blog Administrator | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Pittsburgh Area SharePoint User Group Launches New Site

The Pittsburgh Area SharePoint User Group has recently launched a new site > please check it out and make sure that if you are in the Western Pennsylvania and Ohio areas that you consider taking the time to stop by one of their meetings. Many of their top Pittsburgh SharePoint Experts have their blogs linked from their site.

Posted at 11:47 AM by Blog Administrator | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

11/17/2008

SharePoint Tutorial Web Part Updated

We recently updated our screencast tutorial web part (see at the left). This is a standard SharePoint list which has been saved as a convenient .stp file which you can add to your list template gallery on your SharePoint site and then add to any page with a web part zone on your SharePoint site.

The download is located here, http://blog.sharepointhosting.com/Downloads/tutorials5.stp.

Once installed, you can search your SharePoint site for keywords included in the tutorial description. For example, if you needed to know how to change your password you could just tell your users to search for that term. By clicking on the link they can easily watch the tutorial. This is very convenient.

There are also two different views – a standard list view and broken down by category as seen to the right.

Posted at 11:29 AM by Blog Administrator | Category: Screencast Tutorial | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

8/25/2008

SharePoint Screencast Tutorial: Adding a .stp SharePoint site template prior to template selection for the top level site through the web UI

A common end user question surrounds the use of Microsoft or third party templates for SharePoint. For non server side templates (ones that you can upload yourself to the Site template gallery on your SharePoint) you can simply go to the Site Setting area of the site and click on Site Templates > Upload. Pretty easy. But here's the catch: what if you want to use this template to create your top level site? Since the Site Actions menu is not exposed during template selection it is not immediately obvious how you would do this. Here's the trick. You need to add \_layouts\settings.aspx to the URL of your site and then simply navigate to the Site templates gallery of the site and upload your template. After this, just return to the URL of the top level site and refresh the page by clicking F5 on your keyboard. Now you will see your template in the list of options available to you. Pretty neat.

Here's a tutorial on how to perform this task, "Adding a .stp SharePoint site template prior to the selection of the top level site template through the SharePoint web UI" Click the screen grab below to watch. (PS you need SilverLight).

Posted at 11:33 AM by Blog Administrator | Category: Screencast Tutorial | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

8/21/2008

SharePoint Screencast Tutorial: Dealing with closed and deleted web parts in the browser and with SharePoint Designer

One of the common causes of SharePoint page malfunctions or poor performance is the closed or corrupted web part. This issue comes across my desk two or three times a week. A user forgets that the Close option from the web part menu is not the same as the delete option. After awhile of closing many, many web parts the page load time goes through the roof. Known issue. You need to delete web parts when you don't want to display them on a page any longer. The other common issue is that a developer or SharePoint Designer will be working on a site and while they're figuring out the data view web part which you can add through SharePoint Designer they close it so users don't encounter something on the page which isn't done yet. Then they forget it was there and add three more, or perhaps the data that those web parts are bound to somehow changes and now they become corrupted and the page won't load. Again, known and common issue.

To deal with this you are going to want to do two possible things (1) see if you can still open and the page and if you can just go and delete the closed web parts (2) if you can't open the page in your web browser you are going to want to go open the site up with SharePoint Designer. The closed web parts are grayed out as shown in the video below.

Check it the screencast by clicking the screen grab below or by clicking here, "Working with closed web parts in IE 7.0 and SharePoint Designer"

Posted at 6:47 PM by Blog Administrator | Category: Known Issue; SharePoint Designer; Windows SharePoint Services 3.0; Screencast Tutorial | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

SharePoint Screencast Tutorial: Allow read only SharePoint users to update their profile information

One of the powerful SharePoint features that you can leverage is user profiles. You can find yours by clicking the drop down next to your username in the top right hand corner of the screen in a default SharePoint installation. Typical information you might want to document here is your contact details, title, department and even add attachments such as your resume. This will other SharePoint users to find you more easily and perhaps learn something about you that they did not already know.

There's a catch to updating this profile information – by default only a Contributor or higher may change the information in their profile. This means if you have read-only SharePoint users they will only be able to modify their Alerts and potentially their Password from the My Settings area on the site.

To change this restrictive policy you need to go to Site Settings > Advanced Permissions > and click on the Settings drop of which will allow you to select Permission Levels. Once you arrive at the new screen you will see a list of the available Permission Levels - such as Full Control, Contributor, Read. Click the Read and this will link to a page with a long list of check boxes which you may select to change an individual permission associated with the select Permission level. Down near the bottom of this list you will find the check box next to Edit Personal User Information and then click Submit below. This will now allow your Read only users to update their profile information.

To watch the tutorial below you will need to have the Microsoft SilverLight plug-in activated in your browser. Click the image for this link to start playback, "Allow a read only SharePoint user to update their user information"

Posted at 4:57 PM by Blog Administrator | Category: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0; Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007; Screencast Tutorial | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

8/6/2008

Community Kit for SharePoint – User Group Edition 1.0

You may have heard about the Community Kit for SharePoint (aka "CKS") – it's a set of templates, Web Parts, tools and source code that allows you to create community driven web sites and content on top of SharePoint Products and Technologies. One of the most popular components of the CKS is the CKS:EBE or Enhanced Blog Edition. You have seen many different SharePoint blogs using this template.

Another great add-on is the CKS User Group Edition. This is a SharePoint site template (.stp) that allows you to create a site already tuned to help with common tasks and themes related to technology User Groups. User Groups are a really positive force in the community and SharePoint is here to help. You can download the .stp file here: http://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=CKS&ReleaseId=1926.

Once you have downloaded the .stp file you need to upload it to your Site Templates Gallery. Follow the simple set of instructions below to get it running for yourself on a sub-site of your existing SharePoint site collection.

1. After downloading the SharePoint site template to your computer you need to add the .stp file to your Site Templates Gallery in the Site Settings area of your SharePoint Site under the Galleries heading. Navigate to Site Actions > Site Settings > Site templates.

2. Next you need to select the Upload Document link of your Site Template Gallery.

3. A new screen will appear which will allow you to browse and upload a template. Click the Browse button then locate the file you downloaded in step Next click Open and then OK. This will upload your file. Click through and save all the description and additional meta data about the file.

4. Now navigate to Site Actions > Create > Sites and Workspaces > type a title, description and path to your site and then click on the Custom tab for the template selection. Select your security options and then click Create. This will take several moments and then your new CKSUGE site will be displayed!