Bonjour!!

Yes exactly that is what has happened!!

A business trip in Paris has made me extremely busy these days, due to which I really wanted to but have not been able to spend time on the blog.

I assure y'all that I will be back, till then Au revoir

Increase SharePoint Upload Limit

Are you facing issues when trying to upload files of size above 50 MB to your SharePoint 2007 document library?

Well, I have tried to list down how you can fix those issues and ultimately increase the SharePoint Upload Limit:

First, increase the Maximum Upload Size for a specific web application.

• Go to the Central Administration > Application Management > Web Application General Settings
• Specify the new maximum upload size for your webapplication. For now, we are setting it to 256MB. It could be even set upto 2GB.

Your second step should be to try increasing your default chunk size of large files by trying this STSADM command:

Stsadm.exe –o setproperty –pn large–file–chunk–size –pv   

• This basically denotes the chunk of data that can be read from SQL Server at one time.
• The -pv which determines the property value stands for the upload size in bytes (B).
• It could be set to a maximum of 2GB i.e. (2,147,483,648 B).
• Do an IISRESET

Next, in web.config file of your particular web application, under the httpRuntime tag in system.web section, increase the upload limit to match the value that you set earlier in central administration. You also need to add the execution timeout to allow more time before the upload operation times out as shown in the example below:

httpRuntime executionTimeout="300" maxRequestLength="256000"

where

• 300 means 5 minutes as execution time out
• 256000 allows uploading 256 MB files.

After the above changes, MOSS would allow files of more than 50 MB to get uploaded easily. Incase you still face challenges, check if the file you are trying to upload, is it a blocked file type e.g. EXE, DLL, etc.

Hope this helps you.

Add PDF Icon to SharePoint Library

Quite obviously, we come across many occassions where PDF files are uploaded to SharePoint 2007 Libraries or Lists.

While we can easily see the images of our regular Word, Excel, PowerPoint documents, however the PDF documents look empty without the trademarked image.

Well, no problem, who says we can't have it. It is fairly simple, so let us see how:

• Get the appropriate Adobe PDF icon image (preferrably a gif) from here 
• Save that image confirming with SharePoint images standard such as icopdf.gif. Place the image where Office document icons exist by-default. Check out this 12 Hive path of your MOSS 2007 installation:
  Drive\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\Images
• Now that we have successfully placed the image, we need to inform SharePoint about our modification. For doing this, we need to add an entry to the DocIcon.xml file which sits in the Drive\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\Xml path
• Open the docicon.xml with any editor such as Visual Studio or even Notepad. Under ByExtension section, add a key/value pair as given below:
  Mapping Key="pdf" value="icopdf.gif"
  Note: Take a backup copy of the DocIcon.xml prior to the changes (to be on the safe side). Also, the XML start-end tags are removed as the post wouldnt allow it easily. Kindly take care in your case.
• Save changes to Docicon.xml file. Perform an IISRESET command to finalize the same.

Refresh & check the same list or library page to notice the changes take effect.
Briefly, what this does has done is, if SharePoint sees any file (new/old) with an extension .pdf, it would display the PDF icon against the file as it does for Office documents.

Hope y'all find this information helpful. Cyaaa..and..stay tuned!!

SharePoint Timer Job stuck at Deploying

Dealing with SharePoint solution packages and solution deployment stuck at "Deploying" status!!

Well don’t panic, here is just what the doctor ordered:

1. Check the Timer Job Status for the solution deployment in Central Administration. There could be entries with “Failed” as the job status.
2. Lets try to set things right by running stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs command.
   Note that in a farm environment, you need to run the above command on all the servers.
3. As a next step, try restarting the OWSTIMER Service on all boxes in the farm.
4. If the above steps do not help the solution deployment. You may try retracting the solution using Retract solution command or through the Central Admin's Solution Management.
   stsadm.exe -o retractsolution -name
   For your knowledge, retracting a solution creates another “deployment job”.
   
   Now if retracting the solution does not work, do not try to Force Delete the solution as that would throw an exception, "The solution cannot be removed when job is scheduled or running"
5. Get a list of all the pending & active deployments on your MOSS Farm using
   stsadm -o enumdeployments command.
   Make a note of the GUID of the various solutions on the command window as this would be required in next step.
6. As a last nail in the coffin, we now need to simply cancel the solution deployment by passing the GUID of the solution as shown below
   stsadm -o canceldeployment -id "job id string here"

After performing the above steps, you would be able to either put the SharePoint Timer Job into completion or atleast remove the solution package being stuck in deployment.

If the problem still persists (esp. in the MOSS 2007 Farm environment), you might need to remove/detach a defective WFE from the farm and then retry deployment.

I have tried to put together the steps which have worked for me, hope this post helps you all too.

Dotnet Cleanup Tool

This is not a promotion but sharing my learning about an awesome tool for fixing old..stuck-up..incomplete..DotNet framework installations.

I personally learnt about it while coming across one of the blogs.

Do try it to remove the .NET Framework 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 This would even help you if you want to go ahead with a clean install of .Net 4.0 

Try .Net Cleanup Tool

HTH.

SharePoint DateTime Format Conversions

SharePoint 2007 uses ISO8601 DateTime format internally. It understands either of 2 possible notations for DateTime:

YYYY-MM-DDThh:mmTZD or
YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD
where,

• understandably YYYY being 4-digit year, MM for 2-digit month number, DD for day of month
• T stands for start of time.
• Following that denotes the time which could be "hh:mm" (hours-mins) or "hh:mm:ss" (hours-mins-seconds)
• Z indicates the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)

On many occassions during MOSS 2007 development, we are required to convert from DateTime to ISO8601 DateTime or vice-versa. So, I decided to post on how this could be achieved.

Convert from DateTime to ISO8601 DateTime (C#):

DateTime date = DateTime.Now; string isoDate = SPUtility.CreateISO8601DateTimeFromSystemDateTime(date);

When you are trying to insert or modify some DateTime fields to or from a SPListItem, you could use the code given above to format values into ISO 8601.
You can build the CAML query for the SPQuery object as shown below:
Example:

Note: Don't forget to add reference of Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities in your class file before building your project.

Convert from ISO8601 to DateTime (C#):

DateTime date = DateTime.Parse("2010-06-15 00:00:00"); string sysDate = date.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy");

Note: In above example, the ISO DateTime string is converted to DateTime equivalent using DateTime.Parse method.

Also, incase you want to change the Site Collection date format:

1. Go to "Site Settings" & navigate to "Modify All Site Settings"
2. Click on Regional Settings under Site Administration
3. Change the time zone. Save the changes.

This brings us to the end of this lengthy post. Hope it helps you SharePoint folks, goodbye for now.

Resolve MachineToApplication error in web.config

Sometime, when you are trying move your SharePoint application from your Staging to Production environment, did you come across this ugly error:

Parser Error Message: It is an error to use a section registered as allowDefinition='MachineToApplication' beyond application level. This error can be caused by a virtual directory not being configured as an application in IIS.

I am sure, this is enough to spoil the party just when you are expecting your SharePoint website to be up-n-running in the live environment. Now the question comes, "How do we fix this darn thing?"

Well for that, you could try the below suggestions. If you read the error message carefully, it has 2 hints already in it.

Hint #1: virtual directory not being configured as an application in IIS

Resolution: Make sure you have correctly configured your web application in IIS Manager. If it is a simple folder in wwwroot directory, you should "convert" it into web application.

1. Open IIS manager
2. Find your folder, right-click -"Properties"->"Create" button
3. Recycle the application pool

Hint #2: c:\inetpub\wwwroot\webservices\...\web.config line XX where XX stands for line number in web configuration file

Resolution: If you do a find for line XX in your web.config, you are sure to reach this line,

 

For fixing this, comment this line in this fashion and then save the web.config:

Try accessing your site after the above modifications, it should work fine now.

That's all folks!! (for now :D), please let me know if this helped.

.Net 4.0 Framework Evolution

As you must be aware that Microsoft has unveiled its latest Dotnet Framework 4.0, I just thought I should add some information and provide download links for .Net framework 4.0.

4.0 is a superset of older versions of framework but it is independent of 3.5 or any other older frameworks. It is a standalone package.It is independent due to its brand new CLR. 

The framework is constantly reviewed by MS. If you see the evolution of the framework, the 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 had been on the same CLR but it was much different from previous 1.1 Framework. The versions which followed 1.1 had vast modifications. And, now 4.0 has comeout as a new offspring as shown below:

There are various products such as Visual Studio 2010, SPS2010, BizTalk 2010, etc.. which are already based on this new 4.0 framework.So fire up your engines and try your hands by downloading the latest .Net 4.0 Framework Offline Setup package from this link download

Find the IP Address of the SharePoint 2007 User

Suppose you have a SharePoint website that is being accessed by a lot of users everyday (~1K users daily).

Now for some reason or the other you want to capture the client IP address of the end user accessing your MOSS web application.

Purposes could be like:

• Reporting/Logging user IP address
• Security purposes
• Filtering content based on the client IP address
• Getting the location of the user based on the client IP address
• so on..

You could simply use HttpContext.Current.Request.UserHostAddress to get the IP address of a user.

This could be easily used in both ASP.Net applications as well as SharePoint development projects.

Difference between SPWeb.Users, SPWeb.AllUsers, SPWeb.SiteUsers

MOSS 2007 offers 3 different user collections in the SPWeb object.

• SPWeb.Users
  This represents the collection of users or user objects who have been explicitly assigned permissions in the Web site . This does not return users who have access through a group.
  
  Example (C#):
  SPUserCollection users = web.Users;
• SPWeb.AllUsers
  This gives us the collection of user objects who are either members of the site collection or who have atleast navigated to the site as authenticated members of a domain group in the site.
  
  Example (C#):
  SPUserCollection users = web.AllUsers;
• SPWeb.SiteUsers
  This is the collection of all users that belong to the site collection.
  
  Example (C#):
  SPUserCollection users = web.SiteUsers;

These terms tend to confuse us unless we really know the differences between each one of them.

So I thought it would be nice to write an article stating which is what. Hope this information helps you SharePoint 2007 developers.

How to Fix Central Administration: Service Unavailable Issue?

While working on MOSS Servers, you all must have faced 2 common issues quite frequently

1. You receive a "Cannot connect to the configuration database"
2. Service Unavailable

Basically, the configuration database is where SP stores all information about the SharePoint 2007 installation and the server farm, hence, it is required for the Central Administration to work fine.

Suddenly while you are in the middle of your important SharePoint deployment or configuration, either of these issues will prop up and eat up lengthy hours. Even the easiest solutions to all SharePoint problems i.e. IISReset or Server restart also do not end your miseries.

Hence, I decided, lets apply TRY-CATCH-FINALLY on these issues for once-n-for-all here.

For Issue#1:

Try to run the SharePoint configuration wizard once, follow these steps for the same:

Click Start, click Run, type cmd in the Open box, and then click OK. Change to the following directory: system drive\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Bin Run the following command: psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b

The above steps should fix the issue, but if your problem still persists, then check the event logs of your server. Checking those logs will let you know issues such as -

• Is your SQL server agent running?
• Credentials (app pool permissions) used for connecting to SQL Server is working or failing?
• Facing any network issues to be able to connect to DB?
  (this only applies if the SQL is applied on a separate box from MOSS 2007)
• so on..

For Issue#2:

If even after carrying out the above suggestions, you are not able to track down the problem, then you could unprovision Central Administration and then reprovision it.

This could be easily done via an STSADM command given below:

stsadm.exe -o provisionservice -action start -servicetype Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService -servicename WSS_Administration

 
I sincerely hope this helps you all in fixing this critical MOSS 2007 Central Administration issue.

How to backup a DLL from GAC to another directory?

Recently, one of my friends came up with a requirement where she wanted to take a backup of an existing .Net assembly that was already deployed in Global Assembly Cache (GAC) earlier.

When she asked me this question..I thought to myself that this should not be so tough..well it proved so too at the end.

Finally, this is how it could be done (well..one way of achieving this!!)

If you go to Windows  Run Assembly you will see this screenshot

Now, go to the Command Prompt on your system and type
cd windows\assembly ENTER (Key)

Next, type GAC in the CMD prompt, hit ENTER

Suppose, you want to copy "Extensibility" DLL from GAC to another directory, then type cd Extensibility (you can type Ex and press Tab on your keyboard to navigate faster) to enter the folder hierarchy.

Note: This would be your custom DLL instead of "Extensibility"

Press cd + Tab (keyboard) and hit ENTER again.

Once there, we need to copy!!

In CMD window, type: copy extensibility.dll C:\myCustomDir. Hit ENTER key

Go and check in that directory, you will find the Extensibility dll nicely lazing around..

Hope this post helps you all SharePoint 2007 & Dotnet developers as well as admins in doing this simple but at times life-saving act.

Extracting data from Sharepoint Version table

When using SharePoint 2007, if we turn the Version Control settings to On for a List/Library, then different versions of the file or listitem get stored in the Content DB.

There are multiple ways to retrieve this information:

1. Using MOSS 2007 API
2. Via Versions.asmx - An OOB SharePoint Webservice
3. Or Querying the Docs & DocVersions table directly in using T-SQL statements

Now through SP API, you can try something like this -->
SPWeb web = new SPSite("your site url").OpenWeb();


SPList lib = web.Lists["your library"];


foreach (SPListItem item in lib.Items)


{


SPFile file=item.File


SPFileVersionCollection versions = file.Versions;


//Add your code to loop through the version collection & add custom logic here..


}


Coming to WebService approach:


SharePoint has a Versions.asmx web service to work with versions in document libraries.


For introduction, check out how to utilize this to get some information :
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/klaus_salchner@hotmail.com/SharePointWS11152005045049AM/SharePointWS.aspx




Incase, you want to go ahead querying the SQL tables directly, then you could try a query as below:


SELECT DocVersions.version
FROM Docs INNER JOIN DocVersions ON DocVersions.Id = Docs.Id


Although it is not recommended that you query the SP DB directly. Any modifications or changes to the Content DB tables in unsupported.




Also the data is stored in UTF-8 Encoded format. After the query runs, it returns some data like this:
UIVersion




512
1024
1536
2048
512
1024
512


The above data is difficult to interpret in terms of Version numbers. Anyway, just to let you know


512 = version 1,
1024 =version 2,
1025 =version2.1,
2048= version 3,
1=version 0.1
and so on..


I guess the pattern is clear to you. Hope this article helps you.

SharePoint List Title Column

Generally there are 2 things we like to do with our SharePoint custom list Title field viz. Rename or Hide
Before we do this, be aware of the importance of Title field

• It gets the context menu by default
  Hence, if you hide it then, basically all the Context menu functionality is removed
• As a result, you need to put the Edit button in all of your views just to edit the item
• You also need to place your custom code to re-associate context menu

If you still want to continue, then moving on to Renaming Title.

1. Go to the List settings
2. Click on the Title field
3. Save your changes

If you are looking for hiding your title field, then do the following :

1. Go to the List settings
2. Click the Advanced Settings link
3. Next, selecting the Yes option button for the management of content types on this list
4. Click on the Item link in the Content Types section
5. Now, click on the name Title link and change the Column Setting to Hidden.
6. Save your changes by clicking OK

This article gave simple configuration settings for hiding or renaming List Title field. Hope this helps