Today I updated a SharePoint Server 2010 test virtual machine with service pack 1 (SP1; Foundation and Server) and the August 2011 cumulative updates for SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server. I ran the SharePoint configuration wizard after installing all the updates. When I rebooted the server (suggested when encountering the User Profile sync problem after applying the patches) and tried to open one of the team sites, I received a 503 Service Unavailable error (as shown in the picture below). Service Unavailable – HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable. Once I got over the “what did I do??!?” moment, I of course recognized this as an IIS error, not…
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SharePoint Online and External Users
Microsoft’s Office 365 allows you to not only host your company’s email, files, and website outside of the restrictions of your firewall in a highly available, secure way, but it also makes it easy to share information with your customers. One way you can share content with your customers is to use the free public site given to you when you sign-up for an Office 365 subscription or with an unbundled SharePoint Online plan. This is a great site for small to medium-sized businesses, especially if you are paying another provider to host your content. Consolidate and save! Modifiable templates are provided that get you started fast and to which…
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Why SharePoint Professionals Should Oppose SOPA and PIPA
I know there are many readers of this blog that live outside of the United States, but please bear with me as I address two bills before the U.S. Congress that will have global impact. Instead of addressing the actual bills and the general impact they would have on the internet (you can find information in various other places), I want to look at this issue from the prospective of a technology professional who implements, uses, and blogs about Microsoft technology, including SharePoint. Imagine a scenario where Microsoft (or any other software company) releases a software product that I then begin to implement. But, as I start to use the…
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Renaming a document – ”The Specified name is already in use”
A SharePoint document library in some ways acts similar to a folder when storing documents on your local computer. For example, you can’t have two documents with the same name within a document library (or folder, if you are using folders). If you try to rename a document and give it the same name as another document in the library, you will be given this wonderful error (in SharePoint 2007): [Server Error in ‘/’ Application. The specified name is already in use. A document cannot have the same name as another document or folder in this library or folder. Click your browser’s Back button, and type a new name.] This…
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Error Connecting to Database Server
I recently setup yet another SharePoint farm (this time using virtual machines) and ran into a problem that happens all too often. The scenario is this: I setup MS SQL server in preparation for getting SharePoint installed on a separate server. After setting up your service accounts in Active Directory and installing MS SQL on Server1, I set off installing SharePoint on Server2. When I got to the screen in the Specify Configuration Database Settings within the SharePoint configuration wizard, I received the following error: Cannot connect to database master at SQL server at ServerName. The database might not exist, or the current user does not have permission to connect…
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Custom Filter on a Data View Web Part (series part 3)
Data Views can be a very powerful tool when using SharePoint Designer 2007 in designing pages in your WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 environments (the same is true for SharePoint Designer 2010 and SharePoint 2010). One of the requirements for my project is to display documents from two different SharePoint Document Libraries in one view and have the documents displayed in a specific way. The content is to be displayed in the table view as follows: Document Icon Name Title Modified Date The Document Icon must display the file-specific icon, but the hyperlink must point to the file. [Go here to find out how I accomplished displaying the icon] The…
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Custom Column Data Display Names Using a Data View Web Part (series part 2)
Data Views can be a very powerful tool when using SharePoint Designer 2007 in designing pages in your WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 environments (the same is true for SharePoint Designer 2010 and SharePoint 2010). One of the requirements for my project is to display documents from two different SharePoint Document Libraries in one view and have the documents displayed in a specific way. The content is to be displayed in the table view as follows: Document Icon Name Title Modified Date The Document Icon must display the file-specific icon, but the hyperlink must point to the file. [Go here to find out how I accomplished displaying the icon] The…
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Custom Document Icon Using a Data View Web Part (series part 1)
Data Views can be a very powerful tool when using SharePoint Designer 2007 in designing pages in your WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 environments (the same is true for SharePoint Designer 2010 and SharePoint 2010). One of the requirements for my project is to display documents from two different SharePoint Document Libraries in one view and have the documents displayed in a specific way. The content is to be displayed in the table view as follows: Document Icon Name Title Modified Date The Document Icon must display the file-specific icon, but the hyperlink must point to the file. The Name field should display the document’s name, but without the file…
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SharePoint Datasheet View and Office 2010 64-bit
If you have installed the 64-bit new version of Microsoft Office, Office 2010, then you will most likely see the following message when trying to edit a SharePoint list using the Edit in datasheet function: The list cannot be displayed in Datasheet view for one or more of the following reasons: – A datasheet component compatible with Windows SharePoint Services is not installed. – Your Web browser does not support ActiveX controls – Support for AxtiveX controls is disabled The issue revolves around the fact that 64-bit versions of Office 2010 do not ship with the 32-bit Activex control that would make the datasheet option work with Internet Explorer.…
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Intermittent forbidden errors (403)
After applying a new master page and related theme components, we have been receiving reports that users were being presented with 403 ‘forbidden’ errors when trying to load our intranet site. After refreshing the screen four (4) times, the page would finally load. I checked the web server’s Application log and found that every time a user received a 403 error, there was an “Information” Web Event message logged with a source of ASP.NET and an ID of ID 1314. The body of the event included, among other information: Event code: 4011 Event message: An unhandled access exception has occurred. After doing research and knowing this was most likely a…