Mike Smith's Tech Training Notes

Cincinnati SharePoint User Group Lightning Round in February!

2012-01-22T15:15:00.001-05:00

The Cincinnati SharePoint User Group meets the first Thursday of every month at 6:00 PM at MAX Technical Training in Mason, Ohio (directions). The next meeting is 2/2/2012. Lighting Round! February is our "Lighting Round" meeting where everyone is welcome to submit a proposal to speak for anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. These have been a lot of fun in the past and no matter your

What Time is it in SharePoint Land? (I missed your meeting because of the time listed in the calendar!)

2012-01-19T23:15:00.001-05:00

Luis is SharePoint user working on a SharePoint installation installed in the corporate headquarters in Los Angles. The server there is setup on Pacific Time (UTC-08:00). Sam is a team member based in the Atlanta office who has changed his Regional Settings to Eastern Time (UTC-05:00). Sam schedules a Team Meeting for 10:00 AM. Luis checks the team calendar as sees: Luis is in

SharePoint Cincy 2012 Early Bird Discounted Registration Now Available

2012-01-17T17:11:00.001-05:00

Need I say more! Go here http://www.sharepointcincy.com/ and click Register Now before 2/29/12. .

Adding JavaScript to a SharePoint 2010 Wiki, and other Wiki Tips and Tricks

2012-01-17T14:01:00.001-05:00

The SharePoint 2010 Wiki has a few interesting changes… some I personally think are oversights, some are SharePoint trying to keep you “out of trouble”. Some of things I will look at here: Why can’t I see a list of all of the Wiki pages? The Rename Page button in the Ribbon is grayed out! How can I insert JavaScript and other content not supported by the Ribbon? Why can’t I

SharePoint: Hide List and Library Column Headings

2012-01-13T15:39:00.001-05:00

I have updated the “Hide List and Library Column Headings” article to add notes for SharePoint 2010 and Office 365! Go here for the details: http://techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com/2009/06/sharepoint-hide-list-and-library-column.html Before (2007): After (2007): Before (2010): After (2010): Note: after this customization the checkbox column disappears, at least until

SharePoint: Move the “Add New” Link to the Top of the Web Part

2012-01-07T23:26:00.001-05:00

When you display a long list in a web part you will find that the “Add new” link is often out of sight at the bottom of the page. Your users will have to scroll to the find the link. This article takes a look at some JavaScript to change the order things are displayed in a web part. The before and after: Note: This has been tested on only one SharePoint 2010 installation, so use at

My Blog’s Year in Review…

2012-01-07T17:54:00.001-05:00

I’ve seen that a number of bloggers have posted a “year in review” article, and someone asked where mine was, so… 2011? 79 blog posts Spoke at 7 events including user groups, SharePoint Saturdays and SharePoint Cincy Volunteered at TechEd in Atlanta Wrote a book! Wrote a magazine article Taught way too many classes (my day job!) Updated two courses we have in the Microsoft

Cincinnati SharePoint User Group Meeting Tonight!

2012-01-05T14:10:00.001-05:00

Last minute reminder… Meeting agenda Date: January 5, 2012, Thursday Time: 6:00 – 8:00 pm. Where: Max Technical Training, 4900 Parkway Dr. #160 Mason, OH. Click on the link for directions http://www.maxtrain.com/directions/ Schedule: 6:00 – 6:25 - Socials and Networking - No Registration required 6:25 – 6:30 - Introduction of Agenda

SharePoint: Not all column types can be used in Calculated or Lookup columns (plus a trick to add back four of them!)

2012-01-02T23:24:00.001-05:00

A recent question in the MSDN forums got me to looking again at the limitations on the use of certain column types in calculations or lookups. The list of column types that can be used in lookups is quite limited, but with a trick using a calculated column we can add four more to the list. For my test I added all of the following columns to a custom list. These include the basic columns

SharePoint Exams 70-667 and 70-667 Being Updated for Office 365

2011-12-29T17:38:00.001-05:00

If you have been preparing for the SharePoint administrator exams, you are about to get a surprise! The exam’s web page has this little tidbit… 70-667 and 70-668 will be updated for SharePoint 2010 SP1 and Office 365 in January, 2012. http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?id=70-667 They don’t list a date, so assuming January 1st…take the exam tomorrow or Saturday, or

SharePoint: Displaying PDFs from a Dropdown Menu

2011-12-24T23:15:00.001-05:00

Browsing the MSDN SharePoint forums can really bring up some interesting ideas. Recently there was a question about how to display collections of PDF files in a web page. The question included a link to an article on embedding PDFs in SharePoint 2007 by Sharon Richardson. Sharon’s approach used an <embed> tag. The <embed> tag’s SRC attribute is not updateable by JavaScript and I did not want a

December 2011 CU for SharePoint 2007 and 2010 has been released

2011-12-19T21:50:00.001-05:00

December 2011 CU for SharePoint 2010 has been released Go here and see the links to the details for what’s included: http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_gossner/archive/2011/12/14/december-2011-cu-for-sharepoint-2010-has-been-released.aspx December 2011 CU for SharePoint 2007 has been released http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_gossner/archive/2011/12/17/december-2011-cu-for-sharepoint-

SharePoint: Change the color of a web part column

2011-12-18T19:16:00.001-05:00

Over in my article on color coding lists I got this question: “Can you post a snippet of code that shows how to apply color to a particular column - the entire column (i.e., column 7)” Well, here’s two possible solutions. And you can change anything about the column by changing the CSS. Set the text to bold, change the font family or font size, or add borders. Change the color of a

Review: Amazon Fire

2011-12-17T22:51:00.001-05:00

So what does this have to do with SharePoint, .NET or other technologies I cover in this blog? Three things I guess… I read SharePoint books using an older Kindle, I wrote a book that cannot be ported to the old Kindle (at least not without starting over), and I’m starting to play with portable devices to access SharePoint sites. (If you are in a hurry, scroll down to the SharePoint section or

Black Friday Certification Prep Deal???

2011-11-25T10:23:00.001-05:00

I just got an email from MeasureUp.com with a 2 for 1 deal for exam prep materials. The ad says “Get two practice tests for the price of one!” Sounds good to me as I have a few exams planed in the next month, but when I click the ad to go to their site, there’s nothing about the deal. Maybe they got the email out ahead of the emails… In any case, it says Good thru Friday December 2, 2011,

10 Reasons Not to Brand SharePoint

2011-11-07T20:53:00.001-05:00

I wrote a magazine article! While that was fun, I’m really surprised at the follow up it received. It’s gotten some interesting comments via Twitter, a discussion over at LinkedIn and even a couple of articles about the article! Some folks strongly agree, some strongly disagree and one even thinks it’s funny. As long as I got people interested in the topic, I‘m happy! So do me a favor… I’

SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati is ... well this Saturday!

2011-10-26T20:20:00.001-04:00

Cincinnati’s first SharePoint Saturday is in three days! Are you registered yet? If not, go here now: http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/cincinnati/default.aspx With twenty different presentations you can’t miss! I will be giving two presentations: SharePoint Governance... It may not be what you think it is... and SharePoint 2007, 2010 and Office 365 for Site Owners and Power Users

SharePoint Online Service Update – Cool things coming to Office 365/SharePoint Online!

2011-10-24T21:03:00.001-04:00

See here for details: http://www.office365blog.co.uk/2011/10/important-information-for-coming.html BCS! SharePoint Online will now have BCS! The lack of BCS is a real problem for many people wanting to try out the “cloud” and especially when the only custom code is via a sandbox solution. But sadly, this is for Enterprise (“E” plan) subscriptions only. Windows Phone 7 "Mango” (the

SharePoint: Create an Alert from Anywhere

2011-10-16T16:11:00.001-04:00

Users typically create an alert from a list’s ribbon or an item’s dropdown or ribbon. Regardless of where they click they get directed to /_layouts/SubNew.aspx, which is the Alert creation page. (Would you have guessed that a page named SubNew was used to create alerts?) As long as you know how to setup (or copy) this URL you can create a link to create an Alert from anywhere. In this article

SharePoint 2010 Book Recommendations

2011-10-15T16:13:00.001-04:00

I have not created a book list in quite a while and needed to put together an updated SharePoint 2010 book list for the folks who attend my classes. This list is not complete and unless otherwise noted only contains books I have personally reviewed. Let me know of there are any other books you think I should review and possibly add to this list… Categories of books below: SharePoint

SharePoint 2010 & 365: Tighten up the Quick Launch area

2011-10-13T22:38:00.001-04:00

Too much white space! One change made in SharePoint 2010 that I don’t like is all of the extra white space in the Quick Launch area. So I did a little playing around with the CSS for Quick Launch (with a little help from Heather Solomon…) and came up with this: Before: After:

Heather Solomon’s CSS Chart now available for SharePoint 2010!

2011-10-13T21:34:00.001-04:00

Heather Solomon’s CSS reference chart for SharePoint 2007 has always been a required bookmark for customizers. When Heather spoke at the Cincinnati SharePoint User Group meeting a while back she hinted that a new chart was in the works…. Heather has released a new CSS reference chart for SharePoint 2010! SharePoint 2010 CSS Reference Chart: http://sharepointexperience.com/csschart/

Cincinnati SharePoint User Group Meeting Tonight! And Dayton next Tuesday!

2011-10-06T13:23:00.001-04:00

Just a last minute reminder! Cincinnati SharePoint User Group October 3rd, 2011 6:00 at MAX Details, directions… www.CincinnatiSPUG.org October's Presentation Presentation Abstract Curious what happens when SharePoint process management meets Mad Lib? Want to find out? This very unique demonstration, presented by Jason Keller: Sr Consultant of TekDog Inc., will give you an

Get the current URL in a SharePoint page or web part

2011-10-03T00:40:00.001-04:00

Just a quick note on getting the URL of the current page in a SharePoint C# project. Three ways: #1 (preferred if there is also a query string in the URL) string url = Request.Url.AbsoluteUri; #2 string url = "http://" + Request.ServerVariables["SERVER_NAME"] + Request.ServerVariables["URL"]; #3 (preferred for web parts - see below) string url = SPContext = " +

SharePoint User Group Meetings!

2011-09-29T14:06:00.001-04:00

Cincinnati SharePoint User Group October 3rd, 2011 Details, directions… www.CincinnatiSPUG.org October's Presentation Presentation Abstract Curious what happens when SharePoint process management meets Mad Lib? Want to find out? This very unique demonstration, presented by Jason Keller: Sr Consultant of TekDog Inc., will give you an easy-to-follow walkthrough on how to quickly automate