Turn Off Master Page Approval

By default, SharePoint requires administrator approval of all changes to master pages. While this is an admirable requirement in a production environment, it just gets in the way when first setting up a site. Every time I want to check in a change, I have to click out of a warning dialog, then go to a separate web page, where I have to go through a multi-step process to approve the changes.

If you have administrative access, you can turn off the approval requirement with these steps:

In the “Site Actions” menu, choose “Manage Content and Structure”.
Right-click on “Master Page Gallery” in the left menu.
Select “Edit Properties”

Select “Versioning Settings”


In the first section, you can choose whether content approval applies to that library.

In the second section, you can choose whether SharePoint should bother with minor versions or simply save major versions every time you save. Choosing “major versions only” will cut out a step whenever you save the master page.
When you’re done setting up the site, be sure to turn approval back on if multiple people will have access to the master page.

Alert Emails

Hi Friends, today we came across a creepy situation. Our Systems Team found about 1500 emails sent from our server to a single user with email Id not related to our company. 

By looking into the Notification Properties, we figured out the emails are going from our Extranet SharePoint Server. No clues whats going on.

Finally we came to know that the user is our vendor and has an external domain account thru Forms Based Authentication (EXT\abcd) from our company. 

The user is working with one of our employee and are uploading huge count of documents into a SharePoint Document Library which has alerts enabled to them for all the changes.

Query Server Is Not Responding And SharePoint Search Is Broken

Query Server Is Not Responding And SharePoint Search Is Broken

This post is in reference to my previous post regarding SharePoint Search issue. I have tried to add detailed resolution steps for that issue.

Issue: Query Server does not respond for content index propagation and SharePoint search does not work for searching new contents. It may work for searching old contents.

These steps assume following SharePoint topology:

1. SPSRVR1: Query Server and SharePoint Central Administration Site
2. SPSRVR2: Index Server and Dedicated Web Front End server for crawling
3. SPDB: Database Server – SQL Server 2005

Note: We have heterogeneous environment, where SPSRVR1 and SPSRVR2 have Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with SP1-32 bit (x86) and SPDB has Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with SP1-64 bit. We have installed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard Edition-32 bit (x86) with SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition with SP1-64 bit.

Create a new folder (e.g. “Applications2”) on SPSRVR1 (Query Server) for content index propagation. There is no need to share it. SharePoint will do it automatically and remove sharing for “Application” folder (original location for content index propagation). It is highly recommended to create a new folder (“Application2”) at the same level as its original folder (“Application”).

Run following command on SPSRVR1 (Query Server - Search Server)

stsadm -o osearch -propagationlocation "E:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Office Server\Applications2"

Note: Do not move existing content index from old location (“Application”) to a new location (“Application2”) manually. In fact, SharePoint does it automatically once you create a new location for content index propagation and run above command

E:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Office Server\Applications on SPSRVR1 – Query Server (Currently it is 4.84 GB with the items in index = 1271197)

E:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Office Server\Applications on SPSRVR2 – Index Server (Currently it is 12 GB with the items in index = 1271197)

Above command should reinitialize Query Server for Shared Service Provider- SSP in your SharePoint Server farm. Check Search Settings from SharePoint Central Administration site. Index Server should start propagating content index to a new location on Query Server with the message stating “Propagating to new Query Server (Name of the Query Server).

Once “Indexing Status” and “Propagation Status” are idle, you should start “Full Crawl” to crawl the new contents and update the content index which will be propagated to a new location on Query Server automatically.

This should fix your issue and SharePoint search should be working fine for searching new as well as old contents after you finish “Full Crawl”.

You do not have permissions to open this file on excel services

Error Message:

“You do not have permissions to open this file on Excel Services.
Make sure that the file is in an Excel Services trusted location and that you have access to the file.”

You will see the error message when you try to view the excel file using the Excel Web Services.

Fix:

Browse to SharePoint Central Administration.
Go to the Operations tab >> Services on Server, and make sure that "Excel Calculation Services" status is started. If status is stopped, start the service.


Click on Shared Services Administration and click on default SSP.
Under 'Excel Services Settings' >> click on 'trusted file locations'

Click on 'Add Trusted File Location', using the below settings, create the Trusted File Locations.