Microsoft Support KB Articles for WSS 3.0 and MOSS RSS Feeds:
I came across these feeds for both WSS 3.0 and MOSS while roaming the web, very useful for those who support these products
WSS 3.0
http://support.microsoft.com/common/rss.aspx?rssid=12200&ln=en-us&msid=d65614f79e70034a979b7832fc125f25
MOSS
http://support.microsoft.com/common/rss.aspx?rssid=11373&ln=en-us&msid=d65614f79e70034a979b7832fc125f25
These are great tools to keep on top of what Microsoft is releasing.
Good luck!
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
SharePoint 3.0 usage with older Microsoft Desktop applications. (IE6/Office 2003)
In today’s world of budgetary and credit issues, many companies are cutting back on the basic technology upgrades that are necessary to ensure proper productivity.
How does this apply to SharePoint, a product that can be economy independent due to its ability to increase worker productivity?
In my case, my former employer had delayed an upgrade to XP and Vista for several years citing cost and OS instability (fair enough). Thus we were stuck at Windows 2000 SP4 for the OS; IE6 and Office 2003 for the SharePoint specific desktop tools. However, since the basic Windows SharePoint Server is a “free” product, Management made the decision to upgrade SharePoint itself from WSS 2.0 to WSS 3.0. (That process in itself is a topic for another time, as anyone who has attempted such a task can attest.)
Now don’t get me wrong regarding WSS 3.0 and it’s compatibility with IE6/Office 2003, it works as a simple collaborative tool for the most part without issue. However once people have their “light bulb” moment with the product and start to attempt to utilize some of the more advanced features, this is where the pain points start to occur. It could be something simple like the 100 Character Limit within the Explorer View that I referenced in a previous post, it could be end users attempting to subscribe to an RSS feed with a Browser or Email client that can’t support the technology, users may receive errors when attempting to select content types in order to save it to a Document Library,
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;950292) the list goes on and on.
The end result is that all these little annoyances add up, and if you are one of the usually small team or the only resource your company has for SharePoint, it’s not the end of the world, but it does add to a SharePoint Admins already heavy workload.
Now the big question, what to do? For now there really isn’t much one can do, except follow up on all the Microsoft Hotfixes and Service Pack updates. If you are in a position like I describe, make sure your Management is aware the WSS 3.0 Product and all of its features were designed to be used with Office 2007, and should be planned for accordingly.
How does this apply to SharePoint, a product that can be economy independent due to its ability to increase worker productivity?
In my case, my former employer had delayed an upgrade to XP and Vista for several years citing cost and OS instability (fair enough). Thus we were stuck at Windows 2000 SP4 for the OS; IE6 and Office 2003 for the SharePoint specific desktop tools. However, since the basic Windows SharePoint Server is a “free” product, Management made the decision to upgrade SharePoint itself from WSS 2.0 to WSS 3.0. (That process in itself is a topic for another time, as anyone who has attempted such a task can attest.)
Now don’t get me wrong regarding WSS 3.0 and it’s compatibility with IE6/Office 2003, it works as a simple collaborative tool for the most part without issue. However once people have their “light bulb” moment with the product and start to attempt to utilize some of the more advanced features, this is where the pain points start to occur. It could be something simple like the 100 Character Limit within the Explorer View that I referenced in a previous post, it could be end users attempting to subscribe to an RSS feed with a Browser or Email client that can’t support the technology, users may receive errors when attempting to select content types in order to save it to a Document Library,
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;950292) the list goes on and on.
The end result is that all these little annoyances add up, and if you are one of the usually small team or the only resource your company has for SharePoint, it’s not the end of the world, but it does add to a SharePoint Admins already heavy workload.
Now the big question, what to do? For now there really isn’t much one can do, except follow up on all the Microsoft Hotfixes and Service Pack updates. If you are in a position like I describe, make sure your Management is aware the WSS 3.0 Product and all of its features were designed to be used with Office 2007, and should be planned for accordingly.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
SharePoint Explorer View Problem for IE 6
If you are in an environment where all of the end users still are in Windows File Share Mode, your SharePoint environment will have many many layers of Folders and the users will depend on the drag and drop functionality of the SharePoint Explorer View.
When a user tries to open Explorer View on a subfolder they will get a "Page not found" message.
There is a known bug with this functionality within Internet Explorer 6, as referenced by this Microsoft KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923906, and basically there is a 100 Character limit within IE6 forthe Explorer view.
There is a quick workaround for this:
Have the users go to the top level folder on the SharePoint site to open it with Explorer view.
Then have them navigate to the folder they want to go within Explorer View. Navigating through the levels of folders within Explorer View has no limit on the folder path length.
If you want to implelment a more permanent solution here is a registry fix provided by a link within Microsoft KB article above. (note: as with any registry modifications, be very careful as this will cause the Earth to stop spinning on its axis, or something like that)
1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. To set the limit to 260 characters, locate the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\KB325355_INCREASE_WEBFOLDER_MAXURLLENGTH_TO_260CHAR subkey.
3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type iexplore.exe for the Value Name.
5. Double-click iexplore.exe.
6. Click Hexadecimal, in the Value Data area, type 0x1, and then click OK.
Note: To revert to the 100-character limit for backward compatibility, reset this value to 0x0.
When a user tries to open Explorer View on a subfolder they will get a "Page not found" message.
There is a known bug with this functionality within Internet Explorer 6, as referenced by this Microsoft KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923906, and basically there is a 100 Character limit within IE6 forthe Explorer view.
There is a quick workaround for this:
Have the users go to the top level folder on the SharePoint site to open it with Explorer view.
Then have them navigate to the folder they want to go within Explorer View. Navigating through the levels of folders within Explorer View has no limit on the folder path length.
If you want to implelment a more permanent solution here is a registry fix provided by a link within Microsoft KB article above. (note: as with any registry modifications, be very careful as this will cause the Earth to stop spinning on its axis, or something like that)
1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. To set the limit to 260 characters, locate the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\KB325355_INCREASE_WEBFOLDER_MAXURLLENGTH_TO_260CHAR subkey.
3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type iexplore.exe for the Value Name.
5. Double-click iexplore.exe.
6. Click Hexadecimal, in the Value Data area, type 0x1, and then click OK.
Note: To revert to the 100-character limit for backward compatibility, reset this value to 0x0.
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