PACSharePoint.com

SharePoint Search: Illegal operation attempted on a registry key marked for deletion

2011-11-01T16:00:00.001Z

I came across this issue today when attempting to run a search query from a SharePoint 2010 farm. The UI displayed a rather ugly error message with corresponding correlation ID, which displayed as follows in the ULS logs:

Exception when fetching results: System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[System.ServiceModel.ExceptionDetail]: Illegal operation attempted on a registry key that has been marked for deletion. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800703FA) (Fault Detail is equal to An ExceptionDetail, likely created by IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults=true, whose value is: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: Illegal operation attempted on a registry key that has been marked for deletion. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800703FA)
at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ThrowExceptionForHRInternal(Int32 errorCode, IntPtr errorInfo)
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query.KeywordQueryInternal.Execute()
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query.QueryInternal.Execute(QueryProperties properties)
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceApplication.Execute(QueryProperties properties)
at SyncInvokeExecute(Object , Object[] , Object[] )
at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.SyncMethodInvoker.Invoke(Object instance, Object[] inputs, Object[]& outputs)
at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.DispatchOperationRuntime.InvokeBegin(MessageRpc& rpc)
at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage5(MessageRpc& rpc)
at System.Se...).

It was solved by configuring the following Group Policy setting on the SharePoint server:

You can also configure this setting directly in the registry by creating a DisableForceUnload REG_DWORD value and setting it to 1, as follows:

I’m assuming from the message it related to the Query component, but unfortunately can’t be sure as my Web front-end, query, crawl and search service application roles were all located on the same server. It would be great if anyone has any information on this.

Saving a Globally Reusable Workflow as a template in SharePoint Designer

2010-07-23T10:13:00.001+01:00

This week I made the mistake of publishing a Reusable Workflow as a Globally Reusable Workflow in SharePoint Designer, deleting the original Reusable Workflow, and then trying to save the remaining Globally Reusable Workflow as a template – well, I soon found out that you can’t!

A moment of panic set in where I thought I would have to rebuild my workflow again from scratch, but came across the “Copy and Modify” option on the workflow context menu:

This allows you to add a new Reusable Workflow back to the site using a copy of the Globally Reusable Workflow published earlier. I could then save the new Reusable Workflow as a template - Phew!

Open list item modal dialog (lightbox) with a hyperlink in SharePoint 2010

2010-07-02T01:47:00.002+01:00

The modal dialog appears by default in SharePoint 2010 when you add, edit or view a list item from the List View Web Part. It’s the lightbox style look and feel where the background turns dark and a new dialog opens up on top, allowing you to view and edit items without having to leave the current page.

You may want to use this functionality with a hyperlink – for example in a Content Editor Web Part on a landing page. You can do this by using the code below:

<script type="text/javascript">
var options = {
url: "/Lists/Announcements/NewForm.aspx",
        title: "Add New Announcement",
        allowMaximize: true,
        showClose: true,
        width: 625,
        height: 525,
        dialogReturnValueCallback: silentCallback};
function open() {SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options);}
function silentCallback(dialogResult, returnValue) {
}
function refreshCallback(dialogResult, returnValue) {
    SP.UI.Notify.addNotification('Operation Successful!');
    SP.UI.ModalDialog.RefreshPage(SP.UI.DialogResult.OK);
}
</script>
<a href="javascript:open()">Click Here</a>

When you click on the “Click Here” link, it shows a dialog similar to the one pictured below:

A couple of things to note here – the “options” variable allows you to set the properties of the dialog, one of which is the dialogReturnValueCallback property. Setting this with the silentCallback function (used in the example above) returns to your landing page without a refresh. You can replace this with the refreshCallback function, which will refresh the page and show a pop-up message when an action is configured in the dialog. The best thing to do is play about with it and check out the difference.

Usage and Health Data Collection Proxy Stopped

2010-06-11T11:50:00.002+01:00

I have been having a problem on SharePoint 2010, that has been there since beta but still exists on RTM. Everything worked fine when I first built the beta by running the Farm Configuration Wizard, but when I rebuilt the system and created the Service Applications manually in the Central Admin UI, the usage analysis Web Analytics reports were reporting zero results. I checked the Web Analytics services were started in Central Admin along with all the other usual checks and spotted that the Usage and Health Data Collection SA Proxy was Stopped in the Manage Service Application page:

So I deleted the Usage and Health Service Application from the UI and recreated it using PowerShell with this script:

$serviceInstance = Get-SPUsageService
New-SPUsageApplication -Name "Usage and Health Data Collection Service Application" -DatabaseServer DBSERVER -DatabaseName "SharePoint_SA_Usage" -UsageService $serviceInstance > $null

However, the new SA proxy was still reporting Stopped and still no Web Analytics reports after 24 hours.
I decided to place a PSS call in the end and the answer lies in requiring to run a Provision method on the Usage and Health Data Collection Service Application Proxy after creating it in PowerShell. Therefore, if you already have a Usage and Health Service Application provisioned, you can change it by getting the GUID of the proxy from typing Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy and using it as in the below example:

$UP = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where {$_.ID -eq "7636f85a-88eb-4ffc-8a31-8dbdd0812e14"}
$UP.Provision()

Create a new term in Managed Metadata with PowerShell

2010-06-11T10:26:00.001+01:00

Use this script if you want to create a new term in the SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata Service with PowerShell:

#Connect to Central Admin
$taxonomySite = get-SPSite http://centraladminsite:port

#Connect to Term Store in the Managed Metadata Service Application
$taxonomySession = Get-SPTaxonomySession -site $taxonomySite
$termStore = $taxonomySession.TermStores["Managed Metadata Service"]
write-host "Connection made with term store -"$termStore.Name

#Connect to the Group and Term Set
$termStoreGroup = $termStore.Groups["Group Name"]
$termSet = $termStoreGroup.TermSets["Term Set Name"]

#Create term, term description, and a synonym
$term = $termSet.CreateTerm("Test Term", 1033)
$term.SetDescription("This is a test", 1033)
$term.CreateLabel("This is a test synonym", 1033, $false)

#Update the Term Store
$termStore.CommitAll()

Content type publishing option missing from Site Collection Administration

2010-06-02T23:18:00.001+01:00

Okay, you have set up your content type hub, published your content types and are now ready to use them in your lists and libraries. You go to your list, click to add from existing content types and your published content types aren’t available.

You may find this if the top level site in your site collection was created from the Blank Site template (there may also be other templates out there where this doesn’t work too). This is because the TaxonomyFeatureStapler feature does not include the Blank Site template.

You probably don’t want to go back and recreate your site collection again, so you can activate the feature manually by typing the following stsadm command:

stsadm -o activatefeature -id 73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C -url http://toplevelsiteurl

Once activated, you will see the Content type publishing option appear in Site Collection Administration, as well as the Term store management option in Site Administration on the top level site. You should now be able to use your published content types as required – even in sub-sites (if not, you can repeat the stsadm command for your sub-sites, too).

Issue indexing pages containing the Search Core Results Web Part in SharePoint 2010

2010-05-30T00:43:00.001+01:00

I have spotted an issue with search on SharePoint 2010 when it tries to index a page containing the Search Core Results Web Part, which I am using in particular pages on a site to rollup content across an entire Web Application. When it tries to index one of these pages, the following message appears: "The SharePoint item being crawled returned an error when attempting to download the item”.

Usually, Search Center sites are created with the <noindex> attribute enabled, so you don't normally see this behaviour as the search results pages containing the Web Part are not normally indexed. You can choose an option in the crawl logs to prevent the page being indexed in the future, and it appears that this issue does not prevent the rest of the site from being indexed as long as the Search Core Results Web Part is not used on the home page of the site - I have noticed it can stop the whole site from bring indexed if it is.

Audience by Skills or Interests on SharePoint 2010

2010-05-30T00:38:00.001+01:00

I have noticed that you can now create audiences based on the terms people select for Skills or Interests in their profile. I have used this to show personalisation links on My Sites whenever anyone selects certain keywords.

For example, if you enter "SharePoint" either as an interest or a skill in your user profile, a link to the SharePoint Team Site will appear in the top navigation bar of your My Site pages.

You could obviously apply this to any number of pages, links and Web Parts across the site, using it as a sort of self-subscription mechanism for exposing content of a particular subject matter.

Events 1001, 1004 & 1015

2010-05-30T00:36:00.001+01:00

I have been getting a number of event log errors on my SP 2010 server similar to the Event 1004 shown below:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        MsiInstaller
Date:          07/05/2010 10:27:31
Event ID:      1004
Task Category: None
Level:         Warning
Keywords:      Classic
User:          NETWORK SERVICE
Computer:      SPSERVER.domain.internal
Description:
Detection of product '{90140000-104C-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}', feature 'PeopleILM', component '{1C12B6E6-898C-4D58-9774-AAAFBDFE273C}' failed. The resource 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Service\Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Service.exe' does not exist.

I was also getting similar errors for other folders in the 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0' path, so I resolved it by assigning Read permissions on the 14.0 folder to the NETWORK SERVICE user.

Access Denied when indexing sps3:// paths for People Search in SharePoint 2010

2010-05-30T00:25:00.001+01:00

If you set a dedicated Default Content Access Account (recommended) for search indexing, you may find the following error when indexing the sps3:// path for People Search:

"Access is denied. Verify that either the Default Content Access Account has access to this repository, or add a crawl rule to crawl this repository. If the repository being crawled is a SharePoint repository, verify that the account you are using has "Full Read" permissions on the SharePoint Web Application being crawled. ( HttpStatusCode Unauthorized The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized. )"

I checked the Full Read permissions for the content access account as recommended, but these were correctly implemented. I then discovered that you have to add the content access account to the permissions of the User Profile Service Application by clicking the "Administrators" button when highlighting the User Profile SA in Central Administration.

Then, add the content access account to the list of administrators and assign it "Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers" permissions, as shown below.

Finally, start a full crawl in search to check the problem has been resolved.

Things to watch for when installing Office Web Apps

2010-05-30T00:22:00.001+01:00

A few notes to pass on from my recent experience of installing Office Web Apps in SharePoint 2010:

1) I used the following PowerShell script to set up the Service Applications and associated proxies:

$AppPool = Get-SPServiceApplicationPool -Identity "SharePoint Service Applications Default"
New-SPWordViewingServiceApplication –Name "Word Viewing Service Application" –ApplicationPool $AppPool
$WdViewSA = Get-SpServiceApplication -Name "Word Viewing Service Application"
New-SPWordViewingServiceApplicationProxy –Name "Word Viewing Service Application Proxy" -URI $WdViewSA.Uri.AbsoluteUri
New-SPPowerPointServiceApplication –Name "PowerPoint Service Application" –ApplicationPool $AppPool
New-SPPowerPointServiceApplicationProxy –Name "PowerPoint Service Application Proxy" -ServiceApplication "PowerPoint Service Application"
New-SPExcelServiceApplication -Name "Excel Services Application" -ApplicationPool $AppPool

2) After creating the SA's, I started the Word Viewing, Excel Services, and PowerPoint services from the "Services on Server" option in Central Admin (I know I could have also done this in PowerShell, but it is just as straight forward from the UI!)

3) I was getting errors when trying to load any type of document in Office Web Apps so I checked the Event logs. I found Event 3760 which advised me that my service account for the SA application pool failed to logon to the SharePoint content database. I had a quick look around, but couldn't find anything concrete on what permissions the service account needed in SQL, so I gave it datareader and datawriter, ran an IISRESET, and tried again - same errors.

However, this time the event log reported Error 5214, telling me that I need to assign EXECUTE permissions to the SA application pool service account for the content database. To accomplish this, I created a db_executor role on each content database using the following SQL script:

CREATE ROLE db_executor
GRANT EXECUTE TO db_executor

I then opened up the properties of the SA application pool account in the Logins section of SQL Management Studio and assigned the db_executor role on each content database.

Creating Office Web Apps Service Applications with PowerShell

2009-12-04T17:08:00.001Z

I was following the “Deploy Office Web Apps (SharePoint Server 2010)” beta guide published by Microsoft and got to the part on page 8 where it describes how to create the service applications and their proxies using PowerShell.

I ran the following script documented in the article:

$appPool = Get-SPIisWebServiceApplicationPool
–Name “SharePoint Web Services Default”
New-SPWordViewingServiceApplication –Name “WdView” –AppPool $appPool |
New-SPWordViewingServiceApplicationProxy –Name “WdProxy”
New-SPPowerPointServiceApplication –Name “PPT” –AppPool $appPool |
New-SPPowerPointServiceApplicationProxy –Name “PPTProxy”
New-SPExcelServiceApplication –Name “Excel”
-SPIisWebApplicationPool $appPool |

Well, I didn’t even get past the first line without PowerShell reporting an error. I could have switched to the UI and configured it there, but as I decided to crack the problem instead. After a good old trial and error session, the script now reads:

$appPool = Get-SPIisWebServiceApplicationPool –Identity “SharePoint Web Services System” |
New-SPWordViewingServiceApplication –Name “WdView” –ApplicationPool $appPool |
$WdViewSA = Get-SpServiceApplication -Name "WdView" |
New-SPWordViewingServiceApplicationProxy –Name “WdProxy” -URI $WdViewSA.Uri.AbsoluteUri |
New-SPPowerPointServiceApplication –Name “PPT” –ApplicationPool $appPool |
New-SPPowerPointServiceApplicationProxy –Name “PPTProxy” -ServiceApplication "PPT" |
New-SPExcelServiceApplication -Name "Excel" -ApplicationPool $appPool |

Hope this helps someone…. at least until RTM launches and they have rewritten the documentation :-)

Corrupt Global Navigation in SharePoint

2009-11-12T14:04:00.001Z

I came across a problem with the global navigation in a MOSS site collection where the top navigation bar only showed a link to its own site and another one showing the word “Error”.

When you hovered over the link, it displayed the message “An error occured while rendering navigation for requested URL” with a “The system cannot find the file specified (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070003)” exception message. When I tried to change the navigation using the normal site settings option, it gave me a “File Not Found” message with a pretty large and undecipherable stack trace.

I tried deactivating the publishing features at both the site and site collection level, which returned the normal WSS navigation bar back successfully, but when I reactivated the features, the problem came back again.

I thought I might have more success via the Object Model, so I developed a small Windows application that goes through all the navigation nodes and deletes them one by one. I ran this application pointing at the relevant site collection and although it reported a “Cannot complete this action. Please try again” message, it did enough to get rid of the Error message in the navigation bar and allow me to go back into the navigation settings using the browser and delete the remaining nodes.

I have uploaded the application to my SkyDrive, in case it helps anyone else out there: Download

SharePoint 2010 White Papers

2009-10-20T16:54:00.001+01:00

There are lots of SharePoint Server 2010 white papers appearing on the Microsoft Website to coincide with the SharePoint Conference happening in Las Vegas this week - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/results.aspx?freetext=sharepoint+2010

“This item cannot be deleted because it is still referenced by other pages” and “There is no file with url” errors when trying to delete a master page in MOSS 2007

2009-10-01T16:32:00.001+01:00

I tried to delete a custom master page in MOSS 2007 and it gave me the following message:

“This item cannot be deleted because it is still referenced by other pages”

Microsoft published a workaround for this here, which suggests hiding the master page, but I needed to replace it with a new one and hiding it didn’t seem like a good idea to me. So, I thought I’d try and delete it in SharePoint Designer, which showed exactly the same message as the browser UI. I then tried to delete the file in Windows Explorer, and it disappeared, but then reappeared in the UI again. Grrrrrr!

I also noticed that if I tried to change the properties of the file, it gave me a “There is no file with url” error, which pointed to some sort of corruption or orphaned file. I uploaded a new file over the top to resolve this error, but I still couldn’t delete the file.

Not a perfect solution, but the only way I could overcome the problem was to open the Master Page Gallery in Windows Explorer, create a new folder (I called it “Unused”), and move the master page into the folder. I could then upload the new master page and use it as normal. You will still probably want to perform the actions suggested in the Microsoft article referenced above to hide the faulty one, or it will appear in the Site Master Page Settings page in Site Settings, otherwise you will have two master pages to choose from – the replacement one recently uploaded and the old one preceded with the name of the folder you created to hide it.

Problem adding Keywords and Best Bets programmatically in MOSS 2007

2009-09-09T22:31:00.001+01:00

I was writing a small Windows application for a customer to create keywords and best bets using a CSV file and experienced a weird problem. I used the code published here by Stefan Goßner as a starting point, which successfully added the keywords to the Manage Keywords UI in Site Collection Administration, but when I tried to search on one of the keywords, no best bets were shown in the search results.

The format of the CSV file was, as follows:

Keyword name, Synonyms (semi-colon delimited), Best bet URL

For example: Acme Primary School, Acme;Acme School;Acme Primary, http://www.acme.com

The code I used to create the keywords was:

keywords.AllKeywords.Create(keywordTerm, DateTime.Today.AddHours(-1));
keywords.AllKeywords[keywordTerm].Synonyms.Create(objSynonyms);
keywords.AllKeywords[keywordTerm].BestBets.Create(objBestBet.ToString() + " Profile", "Full school profile for " + objBestBet.ToString(), new Uri(objUrl.ToString()));
keywords.AllKeywords[keywordTerm].Update();

I then found that if I clicked on one of these keywords in the Manage Keywords UI and clicked OK without changing anything, the search for that keyword worked. I eventually discovered that SharePoint didn’t like adding the semi-colon delimited synonyms as a single string and that they needed to be created separately. Therefore, I changed the code to below, using the semi-colons to split the string up into an array of separate synonyms, which worked:

keywords.AllKeywords.Create(keywordTerm, DateTime.Today.AddHours(-1));
//Create synonyms from semi-colon separated array
string[] synonymArray = objSynonyms.ToString().Split(new char[] { ';' });
foreach (string synonym in synonymArray)
{
keywords.AllKeywords[keywordTerm].Synonyms.Create(synonym);
}
keywords.AllKeywords[keywordTerm].BestBets.Create(objBestBet.ToString() + " Profile", "Full school profile for " + objBestBet.ToString(), new Uri(objUrl.ToString()));
keywords.AllKeywords[keywordTerm].Update();

Multiple Site Manager for SharePoint

2009-05-20T13:24:00.002+01:00

I have finally managed to more or less polish my Multiple Site Manager for SharePoint application and publish it on Codeplex. You can get it from here:

Multiple Site Manager for SharePoint

Multiple Site Manager for SharePoint is a server tool which allows administrators to create, delete, and manage SharePoint 2007 sites, site collections, and My Sites either using a CSV file. Site columns with specific settings can also be created using XML.

Full details can be found on the Codeplex site. If you have any questions or requests for future releases, please let me know.

Creating a simple feedback or request form Web Part using SharePoint Designer

2009-04-22T13:35:00.002+01:00

Here are some steps you can use to create a Web Part using SharePoint Designer that displays a new item form for a list with a submit button. It provides an interface for users to be able to post feedback or requests for information (brochures, documents, etc.) without having to go to the standard new item form for the list. The advantage here is that you can add this Web Part to a dashboard or home page to provide a better user experience.

First, we need to create the list. In this example, I would like to give users the option of requesting a number of different brochures. I have created a custom list called “Brochure Requests” with the following columns (I have renamed the default “Title” column to “Your Name”) – The “Brochure Type” column allows the user to choose which documents they wish to be sent:

Go to the page on the site where the Web Part will be created (To prevent the live page from being customised by SharePoint Designer, you may want to create the Web Part on a dummy page in the same site, export it to a file, import it on the live page, and delete the dummy page).
Edit the page in SharePoint Designer, click on the Web Part zone, and select Insert Data View from the Data View menu.
From the Data Source Library, click on your custom list and select Show Data.

Select the columns that you would like to show in the Web Part (for my example, I have chosen Your Name, Your Address, and Brochure Type), click the Show Selected Fields as… button, and select New Item Form.

The Web Part will now appear in the page. From here you can change all sorts of options to style it how you want. I need to change the text on the Save button to Submit, so I have double-clicked the button and changed the Value/label setting.
Once finished, save the page.
Go to the page in the browser and give it a try.

When users click the Submit button, the item will be created in the list. Because the columns are referenced directly from the Web Part, if you make any changes to them (e.g., add a new brochure type), these will automatically appear in the Web Part.

Once this has been done, you can start adding more out-of-the-box functionality to the list. For example, you could set up an alert on the list so that members of the reception desk receive an e-mail when a new brochure request has been posted. They can then go to the item directly from the e-mail and send the brochure to the address specified by the site visitor. You could also have a “Brochure Sent” yes/no column created in the list that was exposed in a “Brochures to be sent” list view, so that reception workers can view outstanding items and confirm when a brochure has been sent to clear it from the list view.

Free (High Quality) Sharepoint Web Parts

2009-04-17T15:34:00.001+01:00

This site has a few really handy Web Parts, but best of all, they’re free! They include:

Media Player Web Part which supports playing MP3, SWF (Flash), AVI, WMV, MP4, MPG, MPEG, YouTube and MOV (QuickTime) files from a SharePoint Library
Nice looking digital clock Web Part which displays the time in different zones.
Picture Lightbox Web Part
Flash rotator Web Part
Slideshow Web Part
And many more!

Great work from Amrein Engineering – if only others took their lead rather than charge for even simple Web Parts…

Free Sharepoint Web Parts

Launching desktop applications from a Web Part

2009-04-07T16:14:00.008+01:00

If your looking for an easy way to create a Web Part which allows users to launch applications from a page on a SharePoint site, then it can be done with the Content Editor Web Part, as pictured below:

All you need to do is create some HTML tables and add the following hyperlink code to a cell in your table, copying your images wherever your image source code locates them:


<a href="javascript:LaunchApp('C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\MSPub.exe')"><img alt="Launch Microsoft Publisher" src="images/PublisherIcon.jpg" width="54" height="54"></a>

You will also need to set "Prompt" or "Enable" for the "Initialize and script ActiveX controls not marked as safe for scripting" security option in Internet Explorer for the zone in which the portal is accessed. If this is an intranet, this should be fairly straightforward as your site should already be present in the "Local intranet" security zone, and more often than not controlled by a Group Policy. This is more difficult if your site is accessible as an extranet site because these machines a) may not trust the site and b) are quite often not controlled by a Group Policy. Obviously, this will relax the security for that zone in the browser, so do not modify this option unless you are sure about doing so.

I have uploaded the Web Part and images shown at the top of this article to the following location if you wish to have a look at or use my example - http://cid-3db995be5d5d9d8f.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Launch%20Applications.zip.

Can't sign in to SharePoint with IE8 or IE7 - 0xc000006d errors

2009-03-24T11:09:00.006Z

If like me you have SharePoint 2007 and Windows Server 2008 installed on the same computer for development purposes, you may find that you have problems signing into your SharePoint site once Internet Explorer 8 has been installed.

Update: This also appears to be happening on IE7 after the installation of recent Windows Update KB963027 - Thanks Virinder for the update.

The following errors appear in the Security Event logs:

An account failed to log on.

Subject:
Security ID: NULL SID
Account Name: -
Account Domain: -
Logon ID: 0x0

Logon Type: 3

Account For Which Logon Failed:
Security ID: NULL SID
Account Name: phil
Account Domain: PORTAL

Failure Information:
Failure Reason: An Error occured during Logon.
Status: 0xc000006d
Sub Status: 0x0

Process Information:
Caller Process ID: 0x0
Caller Process Name: -

Network Information:
Workstation Name: PACSERVER
Source Network Address: 192.168.105.1
Source Port: 57620

Detailed Authentication Information:
Logon Process:
Authentication Package: NTLM
Transited Services: -
Package Name (NTLM only): -
Key Length: 0

The sign in request seemed to be trying to log me on using a domain name called PORTAL, which doesn't exist but is the NetBIOS name of my SharePoint site URL - portal.pacdomain.local. When I tried signing on using the DOMAINNAME\Username format, the logon failed with the same message in the event logs.

To resolve the issue, I followed the steps documented in the following article - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956158/en-us, which seems completely unrelated to the issue I was having as it references a problem when using SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services.

Update: This issue is also discussed in the following Microsoft article - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;896861

Storing Site Metadata - The Easy Way

2009-03-12T09:40:00.008Z

There are many scenarios where you might want to store metadata on a site - for example, if you are creating project team sites, you might want to attach the project reference number, manager, RAG status, etc. If you are into development, you can do this by writing to the site property bag, but if you're not, the easiest way I have found is to create a custom list on the site and add your site information to the first item in the list.

This is very easy to do, and of course users will be able to add the information using the standard list edit form in the UI and you can assign appropriate permissions for specific people to add this information to the site.

There is one request I have had from users though, and that is to show the metadata in a Web Part on the home page of each site and allow new sites to be created from a template which also show the metadata on the home page by default. Whilst not the biggest fan of SharePoint Designer, it does allow you to do this quite easily:

1. Create your list on the site (I have called it Project Information for this example)

2. Create the columns to contain the metadata that you wish to store

3. Add at least one item to the list - I usually populate it by populating the Title column value with "Complete these details for this project by clicking "Edit Project Information" in the left-hand navigation" and creating a link to the EditForm.aspx file in the Quick Launch.

4. Create a new Web Part page on the site as a temporary home for your Web Part.

5. Edit the Web Part page in SharePoint Designer, click Insert > SharePoint Controls > Custom List Form.

6. Choose your custom list in the drop-down box, select the "Display Item Form" and untick the standard toolbar option.

7. Delete any unwanted cells and rows from the table, and get it looking how you want it.

8. Save the page (this will mark the page as customised, but you are deleting later anyway).

9. Go to the Web Part page in the browser and export the Web Part to a file.

10. Go to the default.aspx file on the site and import the Web Part from the saved file.

11. Delete the temporary Web Part page (this was created to avoid you having to edit the default.aspx page - thus, marking it as a customised page).

12. Save the site as a template, remembering to tick the "Include Content" option so that the first item in the custom list is stored in the template.

13. Create a new site using the template - the site metadata will now be present on the home page.

Displaying SharePoint version information in Office documents

2009-02-23T15:07:00.007Z

One thing I get asked for from time to time is to display the latest SharePoint version information in Office documents and templates. I have always found it easier to create new custom columns for this and populate them using an event handler.

Seeing as though I think this may be useful for others, I have uploaded some code and resources to Codeplex which provides this functionality. It comprises of two components:

- A site collection feature to deploy four new custom site columns for use in Content Types or document libraries where version information is to be shown in Office documents.

- A site feature which implements an event handler to populate the custom columns with version information for any document library present in the site, including the current version, when the document was last approved, who approved it, and when it was approved.

Once the custom column information is being populated by the event receiver, it can be shown in Office documents using the Quick Parts (Office 2007) or Fields (Office 2003 or 2007) features.

You can download the solution file, source code, and instructions at http://www.codeplex.com/spversionindocs.

Best Practices Resource Center for MOSS 2007

2009-02-13T12:07:00.003Z

I think Microsoft has done a really good job with their Best Practices Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2007. It breaks down the main consideration areas and offers best practice tips in short bullet points with a link to show more detail. This site is a must-read for anyone involved in SharePoint solution architecture and development: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb736746.aspx

Sign In Web Part

2009-02-12T23:02:00.008Z

I have just added my Sign In Web Part to Codeplex. It's quite a simple Web Part really, but I have used it for a couple of customers who wanted to make the Sign In facility more prominent than the "Sign In" link in the top right corner of the page.

Once the user has signed in, the button will disappear and a message can be shown in its place, or if the authenticated message is left blank in the Web Part properties, no message is shown and the Web Part will appear invisible to the user.Both the button and authenticated message control can be customised with a CSS reference for styling, the dimensions of the button can be modified, and the authenticated message can be changed:

You can download it at www.codeplex.com/signinwebpart

A-Z People Search in MOSS 2007

2009-02-09T10:54:00.007Z

Whilst researching a requirement to provide people search results in a grid view, I came up with this solution using out-of-the-box MOSS Web Parts. It comprises of a new people search results page, Content Editor Web Part showing the A-Z links, and the standard People Results Web Part with changes to the XSLT to show results in a table view, as shown below.

Because it uses OOB Web Parts, you get the usual search refinement facilities on the left, and of course any federated or faceted search options that you may want to configure on the page. I have configured the XSLT so that you get the presence icon next to the person’s name, a mailto link for their e-mail address, and their profile page will open in a new window when their name is clicked. You can obviously change the XSLT to show extra columns if required.

I have uploaded the files mentioned to http://cid-3db995be5d5d9d8f.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/A-ZPeopleSearch.zip.

List of default site definitions

2009-02-06T14:29:00.001Z

This may come in handy for someone, so I thought I would upload it - It's a spreadsheet containing a list of all the default site definitions in MOSS 2007, including their Title, ID, and template reference: http://cid-3db995be5d5d9d8f.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Default%20Site%20Definitions.xlsx.

Best practice on disposing SharePoint objects updated

2009-01-30T22:24:00.002Z

Roger Lamb has added an excellent page on the MSDN site covering best practice around SharePoint object disposal, including links to the updated MSDN article and the new SPDisposeCheck tool, and a quick reference guide on the page itself.

Check it out at http://blogs.msdn.com/rogerla/archive/2008/02/12/sharepoint-2007-and-wss-3-0-dispose-patterns-by-example.aspx.

"FatalError" appears during STSADM import routine and "Access Denied" errors occur when editing document or list item properties

2009-01-26T12:38:00.001Z

One of my customers reported the message "FatalError: Value does not fall within the expected range" during the "Importing List Master Page Gallery" process when using the STSADM import command to restore an STSADM export file over a new site collection. Running the STSADM import routine a second time on the site collection successfully completes with no errors or warnings.

I have since discovered that this issue was present after the customer installed the Infrastructure Updates for SharePoint and is now fixed in the December Cumulative updates package.

However, they have also reported another problem after testing a site restored using the STSADM import routine. All existing document libraries and lists created before the export are fine, but if they create a new document library or list in a site collection restored using the import command and edit the properties of a document or list item, they receive the message "Access Denied" with the standard message asking them to sign in as another user - even if they are the site collection administrator.

I raised a PSS call regarding this issue and a hotfix is currently being developed to resolve it, although the hotfix will only fix new site collections restored using the import command AFTER the fix has been applied. Any existing site collections where the issue currently occurs will remain broken. The hotfix should be available in the next cumulative update release.

Problem upgrading MOSS to the December cumulative updates

2008-12-19T00:38:00.000Z

I installed the December cumulative update today and the configuration wizard failed with “The B2B upgrader timer job failed.” in the diagnostics log file.

Tried loads of things, including running the configuration routine from the command line using psconfig and also stopping the upgrade job and restarting using stsadm -o setproperty -pn command-line-upgrade-running -pv No (this worked for me in the past when the configuration job failed).

In the end, it was a comment at the bottom of the following page that solved the issue: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointadmin/thread/e3a38087-944b-46aa-b6fa-37482144545b/#page:2

It suggests to remove the WSS Help service from Operations in Central Administration before running the configuration wizard. I decided to ignore the bit about not needing to run psconfig because it tends to log better results during a problem, so ran the following command after stopping the Help service: psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force

I then ran the normal config wizard to make sure and restarted the WSS Help service in Central Admin....

Preventing Personalisation Links from appending MySiteView=1

2008-09-02T12:46:00.000+01:00

Just add a # symbol to the end of your link:

e.g., https://www.portal.com/# or https://www.portal.com/sites/sitecollection/#

Problem using Created By and Last Modified By drop-down options in Advanced Search

2008-06-16T16:51:00.001+01:00

There appears to be a bug in MOSS where the Created By and Last Modified By options do not return any results in the Advanced Search page. It appears that these fields only show results when indexing SPS 2003 content! Please have a look at the link below:

Unraveling the mysteries of SharePoint Search: Created By and Last Modified By - http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/19021

There is a "workaround" to fix the Last Modified By issue at http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1937319&SiteID=1, but I have not found anything yet on Created By. Basically, you need to map the 'Office:8' and 'ows_Last_x0020_Modified(text)' crawled property to the 'ModifiedBy' managed property.

More info on the behaviour of the Author search can be found here: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/17708

It appears that when you do a search on the Author column, it takes the 'Author' document property from the Office application first - and if it's blank (or is not an office document like a PDF or SharePoint list item) - it takes the Created By property in SharePoint.

Setting default option in ISA logon form to Private Computer

2008-06-13T21:56:00.001+01:00

Now, obviously I would not recommend this as best practice, but I was asked if I could configure the default security option in the ISA 2006 logon form to Private Computer instead of Public (despite venting reluctance) to make it easier for users to logon and use persistent cookies to gain access to Office applications from SharePoint without being prompted to sign in again.

So, if you also want to implement this, this is how you do it:

1. Create a new set of forms in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft ISA Server\CookieAuthTemplates folder on the ISA server and change your rules to use these forms instead of the default (see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb794733.aspx for details).

2. Edit each of these files in notepad:

usr_pwd.htm
usr_pwd_pcode.htm
pwd_pcode.htm
pwd_pcode_nxt.htm

3. Find and remove checked="checked" from this line: <td><input id="rdoPblc" type="radio" name="trusted" value="0" class="rdo" onclick="clkSec()" checked="checked" /></td>

It should now read: <td><input id="rdoPblc" type="radio" name="trusted" value="0" class="rdo" onclick="clkSec()" /></td>

4. Find and add the checked="checked" option to the following line: <td><input id="rdoPrvt" type="radio" name="trusted" value="4" class="rdo" onclick="clkSec()" /></td>

It should now read: <td><input id="rdoPrvt" type="radio" name="trusted" value="4" class="rdo" onclick="clkSec()" checked="checked" /></td>

5. Perform this for all four files listed in step 2.

6. Restart the Microsoft Firewall service.

SharePoint Backup Script

2008-05-15T16:36:00.005+01:00

This isn't the most advanced backup script you will ever see, but a) it works as a batch file so it is easy to modify and deploy, and b) it backs up more than the OOB tools do on their own, as follows:

- Deletes and recreates the folder structure for the backup target share
- Backs up site collections using stsadm (you will need to add the site collections that you wish to backup)
- Performs a farm backup using stsadm
- Copies the 12 hive across
- Performs an IIS metabase backup and copies the inetpub folder across
- Copies the Global Assembly Cache

For it to work, you will need to create a share on your backup server called "Backup" with the following permissions:

- SharePoint setup/administrator account - Full Control
- SQL Service Account - Full Control
- SharePoint Service/Server Farm Account - Full Control

Run the following command line on the backup server to do this for you:

NET SHARE Backup=D:\Backup /GRANT:DOMAIN\SPAdmin,FULL /GRANT:DOMAIN\SQLSVC,FULL /GRANT:DOMAIN\SPSVC,FULL

And here is the backup script:


@echo off
echo =================================================
echo Backup SharePoint Farm
echo =================================================
c:
CD\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN
@echo off

rd \\BACKUPSERVER\Backup\SharePoint /s /q
md \\BACKUPSERVER\Backup\SharePoint
md \\BACKUPSERVER\Backup\SharePoint\12
md \\BACKUPSERVER\Backup\SharePoint\IIS
md \\BACKUPSERVER\Backup\SharePoint\GAC

echo Backing up site collections
stsadm -o backup -url http://portal.domain.com -filename \\BACKUPSERVER\Backup\SharePoint\Portal.dat -overwrite

echo Backing up farm
stsadm.exe -o backup -directory \\BACKUPSERVER\Backup\SharePoint\ -backupmethod full

echo Backing up 12 hive
xcopy "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12" \\BACKUPSERVER\Backup\SharePoint\12 /s /e /c /h /f /r /k

echo Backing up IIS
c:
cd\windows\system32\inetsrv\MetaBack
del metabasebackup.*
cscript c:\windows\system32\iisback.vbs /backup /b MetabaseBackup /overwrite
xcopy metabasebackup.* \\BACKUPSERVER\Backup\SharePoint\IIS /s /e /c /h /f /r /k
xcopy c:\inetpub\*.* \\BACKUPSERVER\Backup\SharePoint\IIS /s /e /c /h /f /r /k

echo Backing up GAC
xcopy c:\windows\assembly\*.* \\BACKUPSERVER\Backup\SharePoint\GAC /s /e /c /h /f /r /k

echo Backup operation finished

Post-SP1 hotfix for UK My Sites released

2008-05-09T23:20:00.000+01:00

The hotfix to enable new My Sites to be created with English (United Kingdom) regional settings has been published from KB article 942819 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942819).

Install the fix and set the regional settings of the My Site Host site collection (i.e., the root site of your My Site Web Application) to UK. Any new personal site created will inherit these regional settings.

Event ID's 7076, 6398 and 6432

2008-04-07T20:46:00.001+01:00

I have seen these errors a few times, where the Application Event log shows ID's 7076, 6398 and 6432 with the message "Attempted to read or write to protected memory". Microsoft has located the problem to be related to IIS and have issued a fix at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=946517. It can be installed regardless of MOSS/WSS service pack installed. Also see the following article for further details - http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=47

Update (courtesy of my colleague Virinder Aulakh): You get an unspecified SMTP error when you try changing SMTP settings in IIS after applying the hotfix (KB946517) to resolve Event ID 6398 errors. The problem is described in detail here http://blogs.msdn.com/vijaysk/archive/2008/04/14/issue-smtp-configuration-unspecified-error.aspx and the subsequent Microsoft Knowledgebase article is here http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/KB/950426.

SharePoint development, here I come!

2007-11-26T16:10:00.000Z

I am entering a new phase of my career today, attending the first of a 5-day course titled "Introduction to C# Programming with Microsoft .NET". I'm hoping that I can take what I learn here, and along with previous experiences of programming back in the day, start to expand my capabilities to include some development in SharePoint.

Whilst I will never be a full-scale application developer, I'm hoping that it will make me a more rounded SharePoint consultant with the capability to add extra value to the SharePoint deployments that I am involved in.

I also intend to publish the majority of Web Parts and tools that I develop through this blog, so watch this space (hopefully!)...

Search problems with large SharePoint groups

2007-10-10T17:40:00.000+01:00

Had a problem where the search facility was indexing some site collections but not others - even though they were in the same namespace (i.e., couldn't have been proxy exceptions, etc.).

The crawl log listed errors against the site collection URLs saying "Element Not Found". The gather logs also reported the following for each site collection URL:

10/09/2007 13:20:14.37 mssdmn.exe (0x0424) 0x0E04 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable STS3::COWSSecurityObject::AddUserToACLs: Return error to caller, hr=80070057 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3util.cxx Line:1637
10/09/2007 13:20:14.37 mssdmn.exe (0x0424) 0x0E04 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable STS3::COWSSecurityObject::Init: Return error to caller, hr=80070057 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3util.cxx Line:1396
10/09/2007 13:20:14.37 mssdmn.exe (0x0424) 0x0E04 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable STS3::COWSSite::AddScope: Return error to caller, hr=80070057 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3util.cxx Line:1171
10/09/2007 13:20:14.37 mssdmn.exe (0x0424) 0x0E04 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable STS3::COWSSubWeb::InitSecurity: Return error to caller, hr=80070057 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3util.cxx Line:2332
10/09/2007 13:20:14.37 mssdmn.exe (0x0424) 0x0E04 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable STS3::COWSSubWeb::Initialize: Return error to caller, hr=80070057 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3util.cxx Line:2163
10/09/2007 13:20:14.37 mssdmn.exe (0x0424) 0x0E04 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable CSTS3Accessor::InitURLType: Return error to caller, hr=80070057 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3acc.cxx Line:1500
10/09/2007 13:20:14.37 mssdmn.exe (0x0424) 0x0E04 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable CSTS3Accessor::InitURLType fails, Url sts3s://portal.edulink.internal/siteurl=/siteid={6b5da8a8-fdb4-419f-a82d-aaef67d6c7a9}/weburl=/webid={e480f6f1-472e-4770-9b70-2115c1089400}, hr=80070057 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3acc.cxx Line:172
10/09/2007 13:20:14.37 mssdmn.exe (0x0424) 0x0E04 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable CSTS3Accessor::Init fails, Url sts3s://portal.edulink.internal/siteurl=/siteid={6b5da8a8-fdb4-419f-a82d-aaef67d6c7a9}/weburl=/webid={e480f6f1-472e-4770-9b70-2115c1089400}, hr=80070057 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3handler.cxx Line:238
10/09/2007 13:20:14.37 mssdmn.exe (0x0424) 0x0E04 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable CSTS3Handler::CreateAccessorExB: Return error to caller, hr=80070057 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3handler.cxx Line:256

The problem was a SharePoint group present in the top level site of each site collection with membership of just over 1900 accounts. I removed the group in each top level site and this resolved the issue.

The "Plan for software boundaries" guide at http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/6a13cd9f-4b44-40d6-85aa-c70a8e5c34fe1033.mspx?mfr=true suggests a limit of 2,000 security principals per Web site, so it could be this. However, the users still existed in the site collection after I removed the group, so it was probably related to the number of users in the SharePoint group instead.

Using stsadm to add users to a SharePoint group

2007-09-28T20:51:00.000+01:00

At first glance, the stsadm adduser command seems a bit of a pain when adding users into SharePoint because you have to specify a userlogin, useremail and username variable when using the command - these are not optional.

However, I have found that when I use dummy names for the useremail and username variables, the user profile database in MOSS overwrites them once the user has been added to the group. So, I used the following stsadm command to add users to a SharePoint group, which can be useful when you have bulk users to add from a CSV file:

stsadm -o adduser -url http:// -userlogin -useremail test@test.com -group "" -username "Test User"

For example,

stsadm -o adduser -url https://portal.edulink.internal -userlogin EDULINK\phil.childs -useremail test@test.com -group "Corporate Users" -username "Test User"

Once added, wait a few seconds and the e-mail address and user name changes from test@test.com and Test User to the correct one specified in the user profile database. Make sure that you test this with one user first though, before creating a script to add 1000 users all at once!

Catalog 'index file on the search server Search' error on WSS 3 Search service

2007-09-27T22:18:00.000+01:00

Everything was running fine for a couple of months and then the following error started to appear on the index server every five minutes:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Windows SharePoint Services 3 Search
Event Category: Gatherer
Event ID: 2424
Date: 27/09/2007
Time: 13:40:01
User: N/A
Computer: EP-SP-INDEX01
Description:
The update cannot be started because the content sources cannot be accessed. Fix the errors and try the update again.

Context: Application 'Search', Catalog 'index file on the search server Search'

There are lots of articles on this, one of them with a list of 15 suggestions to resolve the problem! However, I managed to find an article from Ivan Wilson at http://guru-web.blogspot.com/2007/08/wss-30-content-indexing-update-cannot.html that solved it for me (thanks, Ian). Ian says as follows:

"I fixed this by going to Central Administration – Operations – Services on Server. I selected the Windows SharePoint Services Search entry. I then changed the Service Account username and password to match the Content Access Account details. Click OK on the bottom of the page and wait five minutes."

"Once I saw that the error was no longer being logged I went back and set the Service Account back to its original username and password. Still no sign of the error. I also verified that WSS was indexing content again."

So that is exactly what I did. I had two service accounts - one called SP_WSS_SearchSVC and SP_WSS_SearchCA, so I entered the SVC account for both the service account AND content access account, restarted the service and it worked.

The only thing that differed from Ian's findings were that when I returned it back to having the SVC account as the service account and CA account as the content access account, the error reappeared straight away, except that it also reported a one-off error with trying to read the Central Administration site, as follows:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Windows SharePoint Services 3 Search
Event Category: Gatherer
Event ID: 2436
Date: 27/09/2007
Time: 13:50:01
User: N/A
Computer: EP-SP-INDEX01
Description:
The start address cannot be crawled.

Context: Application 'Search index file on the search server', Catalog 'Search'

Details:
(0x80131534)

Not sure why all this started (it may have been after some SQL maintenance plans were run), so it's probably something to do with permissions somewhere, but rather than spend an age trying to discover what it was, I ended up using the service account for both services and content access - There shouldn't be any security implications of doing this because both accounts are only Domain Users, with identical SQL permissions, and this is only for indexing the WSS help files anyway. The only difference is that the service account is being used to run the Windows service, which gives it slightly more permissions on the Index server itself.

Getting the Document Conversions Service running on a server farm

2007-09-26T22:07:00.000+01:00

I have two front-end Web servers and an Index server and I want to install the Document Conversions Load Balancer and Launcher service on the Index server. I chose this configuration rather than load balancing the Launcher service across the front-ends based on the recommendations in this article: http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/f7d7b652-10cc-4c99-8c05-0cc4341d4d941033.mspx, and also because resilience of the Document Conversions service was not required.

I also followed the instructions titled "Configuring document conversions in a server farm" at the bottom of this article because the registry entries did need be set manually. After doing this, the Load Balancer service started fine but the Launcher service just hang on "Starting".

I then found another article (not referenced at all in the first article) called "The Document Conversions Launcher Service status on a SharePoint Server 2007 Web front-end server displays "Starting" but does not start or stop" at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941212. I went through the instructions on this article and the Launcher service started successfully.

This article mentions the problem if you are trying to start the Launcher service on a second Web Front-End server - but in my example, I was trying to start it on the Index server.

Nothing appears in the site collection usage reports pages

2007-09-10T18:52:00.000+01:00

Had the problem where the MOSS usage analysis processing logs were being created correctly in the default LOGS folder, but nothing appreared in the site collection usage reports pages.

Strangely, I could also successfully create reports in SharePoint designer and view the usage reports for each individual site at /_layouts/UsageDetails.aspx.

Well, surprise surprise it was a permissions issue. To get it working I added the local WSS_WPG account to the LOGS folder and gave it Read/Write/Modify permissions. However, even though there are log files dating back 1 month, the usage reports page only shows data from when I added the WSS_WPG account to the logs folder, so you will need to wait 24 hours before the first data appears.

Choosing members of an existing group for user profile import

2007-08-29T18:48:00.000+01:00

I needed to set up a User Profile import connection to include members of a specific group rather than the whole directory (can be quite useful for preventing lots of useless account appearing, such as service accounts). This is what I did:

- Go to Site Settings > Manage profile database > Configure profile import.

- Select “Custom Source“. This will let you create import connections

By the way, this is also how you can configure to import from multiple domains in a forest without having to specify the entire forest

Also, this is how you get the “Manage connections“ link on the Manage Profile Database screen

- It should ask you for the connection settings

- Fill in User Filter

Format:
(&(objectCategory=Person)(objectClass=User)(memberOf=[distinguised name of the group]))

Example 1 - This LDAP query selects any account from members of the specified group in AD:
(&(objectCategory=Person)(objectClass=User)(memberOf=CN=Group1,OU=Domain Distribution Groups,DC=domain,DC=co,DC=uk))

Example 2 - This LDAP query selects only enabled accounts from members of two groups in AD:

(&(objectCategory=Person)(objectClass=User)(!userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2)((memberOf=CN=Group1,OU=Domain Distribution Groups,DC=domain,DC=co,DC=uk)(memberOf=CN=Group2,OU=Domain Distribution Groups,DC=domain,DC=co,DC=uk)))

Problems getting the MOSS RSS Viewer working through a proxy server

2007-08-22T10:59:00.001+01:00

This is quite a common problem, but I am posting it here in case I forget it later!

It is well documented that you have to add an entry into the web.config file in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\, but I found that it can be quite fussy as to how these lines are formatted. The lines I added were as follows (I have left the /appSettings and /configuration references in as pointers):

</appSettings> 
  <system.net> 
    <defaultProxy> 
      <proxy usesystemdefault = "false" proxyaddress="http://proxy.domain.internal:8080" bypassonlocal="true" /> 
    </defaultProxy> 
  </system.net> 
</configuration>

These are the things that I tried to get it working:
- Ensured that all the indentations were correct for the system.net and defaultProxy references.
- Entered http:// at the start of the proxy address rather than just have the FQDN.
- Ensured that there were no blank lines between any of the code.

ISA Server 2006 and Windows Server 2003 SP2

2007-08-01T20:14:00.000+01:00

I would strongly advise following steps 2 and 3 in the following article BEFORE installing ISA Server 2006 on 32-bit Windows Server 2003 with SP2: http://blogs.technet.com/isablog/archive/2007/03/27/isa-server-and-windows-server-2003-service-pack-2.aspx. BTW, step 2 only needs to be done on multi-core multi-processor servers (mine were 2 socket dual core HP DL380's).

I had all sorts of issues before implementing these fixes - I couldn't tell you wish one solved the problems but it is probably a good idea to do both just in case.

If implementing step 2 and setting the mask to assign NICs to separate processors, I assigned NIC1 port A to processor thread 0, NIC1 port B to processor thread 1, NIC2 port A to processor thread 2 and NIC2 port B to processor thread 3.

Customisations to the Content Query Web Part do not appear for 'normal' users

2007-07-26T00:46:00.000+01:00

I customised the Content Query Web Part to show additional columns from Announcements lists, but these columns could only be viewed in the Web Part by Site Collection Administrators - 'conventional' users (even administrators of the root site) could only see the default title column of each announcement.

To resolve this, the ItemStyle.xsl and ContentQueryMain.xsl files that I customised needed to be checked in as major versions. I had initially tried to do this with SharePoint Designer, which appeared to show them as checked in, but it was only when I looked at the Style Library using a browser that I could see what the problem was - a mandatory column called "Title" needed to be completed before they could be checked in.

I edited the properties of each file, gave them a title, and then checked them in as major versions.

6482, 7076, 6398, and HRESULT 0x80005006 errors on second front-end server

2007-07-25T19:28:00.000+01:00

Intermittently getting the above errors on my second MOSS front-end server after running an MS hotfix. This server is also hosting a second instance of the Central Administration Web application for resilience purposes.

A lot of advice recommends running a .NET 2.0 hotfix to resolve, but as this was only happening on my second front-end server I wasn't convinced that this would solve the issue (also, others on the Web also found that it went away for a few days but came back again).

Followed some advice after extensive searching on the Web to remove the Central Administration Web application using the SharePoint Configuration Wizard and reinstall it back again afterwards. I have done this and so far everything works fine, although the error still may appear again in the future.

Profile import works but get Error 7888 in the event log

2007-07-25T19:22:00.000+01:00

Everytime a profile import is run (full or incremental), everything seems to go through successfully, but there is the following error in the event logs:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: Office Server General
Event ID: 7888
Date: 24/07/2007
Time: 22:00:34
User: N/A
Computer: EP-SP-INDEX01
Description:
A runtime exception was detected. Details follow. Message: Access Denied! Only site admin can access Data Source object from user profile DB.

Techinal Details: System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access Denied! Only site admin can access Data Source object from user profile DB. at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.SRPSite.AdminCheck(String message) at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.DataSource._LoadDataSourceDef(IDataRecord rec) at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.DataSource._LoadDataSourceDef(String strDSName) at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.DataSource..ctor(SRPSite site, Boolean fAllowEveryoneRead) at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.DataSource..ctor(SRPSite site) at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileConfigManager.GetDataSource() at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.BDCConnector.RefreshConfiguration(String sspName)

I resolved this by doing the following:
- Go into the Shared Services administration page.
- Click 'Personalization Services Permissions'.
- Add the search service account (in my case this was DOMAIN\sp_search_svc) and give the account 'Manage User Profiles' permissions.

Errors 5555 and 7888 in the event log

2007-07-25T01:30:00.000+01:00

We wanted to change the content database location from the SQL netbios name to the SQL FQDN instead (apparently this improves performance of db access) - so we removed reference to the content databases in Central Administration and re-attached them. What we should have done first is used the stsadm preparetomove command before doing so, creating the following messages in the event viewer:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: User Profiles
Event ID: 5555
Date: 24/07/2007
Time: 16:00:01
User: N/A Computer: EP-SP-FE01
Description:
Failure trying to synch web application 43caed9b-30c4-4b56-a5dd-3973ef92e354, ContentDB a5c17eb0-94bf-4362-87b1-be274bb5cc03 Exception message was A duplicate site ID ef4c600f-3069-4d07-9231-fd27fc72ef28(https://mysite/) was found. This might be caused by restoring a content database from one server farm into a different server farm without first removing the original database and then running stsadm -o preparetomove. If this is the cause, the stsadm -o preparetomove command can be used with the -OldContentDB command line option to resolve this issue.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: Office Server General
Event ID: 7888
Date: 24/07/2007
Time: 16:00:01
User: N/A
Computer: EP-SP-FE01
Description:
A runtime exception was detected. Details follow. Message: A duplicate site ID ef4c600f-3069-4d07-9231-fd27fc72ef28(https://mysite/) was found. This might be caused by restoring a content database from one server farm into a different server farm without first removing the original database and then running stsadm -o preparetomove. If this is the cause, the stsadm -o preparetomove command can be used with the -OldContentDB command line option to resolve this issue.

Techinal Details: Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ProfileSynchronizationDuplicateSiteIDException: A duplicate site ID ef4c600f-3069-4d07-9231-fd27fc72ef28(https://mysite/) was found. This might be caused by restoring a content database from one server farm into a different server farm without first removing the original database and then running stsadm -o preparetomove. If this is the cause, the stsadm -o preparetomove command can be used with the -OldContentDB command line option to resolve this issue. at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ContentDBSynchronizer.RegisterSitesForSynch(Guid[] rgGuid, Int32 nGuids, Object dummy) at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.SynchCollection`2.FlushAdds() at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ContentDBSynchronizer.AddRemoveSites(String strFirstChangeToken, SPChangeToken lastChangeToken) at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ContentDBSynchronizer.SynchContentDB() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Diagnostics.FirstChanceHandler.ExceptionFilter(Boolean fRethrowException, TryBlock tryBlock, FilterBlock filter, CatchBlock catchBlock, FinallyBlock finallyBlock)

To resolve the situation we ran the following command on one of the front-end servers:
stsadm -o sync -deleteolddatabases 0

This sorted the problem, but it would have probably been better to use the preparetomove command in the first place. As to whether using the SQL FQDN improved performance or not - it didn't seem to make any difference whatsoever!

"Failed to configure propagation share" error when configuring search server

2007-07-24T22:48:00.000+01:00

I have two front-end servers and a dedicated index server - FE01, FE02 and INDEX01. I configured the index server as an indexer and FE01 as a search/query server with no problems. However, when I tried to configure FE02 as a second search/query server, I got the error message "Failed to configure propagation share".

I couldn't find any resolution on the Web, so this is how I sorted it:

1. Manually configured the Office SharePoint Server Search service as Manual startup and the Search service account credentials (domain\sp_search_svc) on the Log On tab. I did NOT start the service.

2. Navigated to the SharePoint data folder 'E:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Office Server' and created a new folder called 'Applications'.

3. Shared the folder with the share name 'searchindexpropagation' and description 'Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Search propagates index files through this share'.

4. Configured Full Control share permissions for the 'sp_search_svc' domain account & 'wss_admin_wpg' local group.

5. Configured folder security by adding Modify permissions to the 'sp_search_svc' domain account.

6. Configured the search/query server as normal through Central Administration, but instead of selecting to auto-create the propagation share, I selected to use STSADM instead.

Persistent cookies and Office applications

2007-07-10T19:29:00.000+01:00

By default in Vista IE7, persistent cookies are not shared with Office applications due to the “Protected Mode” setting in IE. For a work around, please refer to 932118 Persistent cookies are not shared between Internet Explorer 7 and Office applications in Windows Vista http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;932118