Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Munich

Published at August 18, 2015 ·  1 min read

I’m proud to be a part of the first SharePoint Saturday in Munich on October 10th, 2015. Come and join an awesome lineup of speakers (and me) for a lot of in depth Information on SharePoint 2013 and 2016. My Session will be about the changes in the User Profile Sync Service in SP 2016. http://www.spsevents.org/city/Munich/Munich2015/_layouts/15/SPSEvents/Speakers/Session.aspx?SpeakerId=1168&ID=109 Session details will be revealed soon… Don’t miss this free, all English event, registration starts on September 1st....

How to use the Script Editor WebPart on a SharePoint 2013 MySite (which is missing on MySites by default)

Published at May 8, 2014 ·  1 min read

SharePoint 2013 comes with the new Script Editor WebPart which can be used on Wiki/WebPart/Publishing Pages to add Script Code to the page. Using it is fairly simple: add it to the page from the WebPart Catalog. BUT MySites for example don’t contain the Script Editor WebPart in the catalog: To bring the Script Editor WebPart to the MySite WebPart Catalog (and therefore to all of the subsites like Blog etc....

InfoPath - RIP

Published at February 3, 2014 ·  1 min read

It was somehow clear that InfoPath doesn’t have the brightest future after being the only part of Office 2013 that was not revised. Now it’s official – InfoPath will be retired and there will be no future version: http://blogs.office.com/2014/01/31/update-on-infopath-and-sharepoint-forms/ I’m quite curious about what the new roadmap will be – SPC2014 will tell us… Markus...

Community Site Template not available when creating a subsite

Published at October 22, 2013 ·  1 min read

The Community Site is a new template in SharePoint 2013 that allows us manage discussions and Q&A contents in a comfortable way. Unfortunately this template is not available for creation as a subsite (in the browser) of a Publishing Site – even if you add it to “Page Layouts and site templates”: Add subsite shows the following (I added “Team Site” just to make sure that the “Collaboration” tab is showing up):...

“Sideloading of apps is not enabled on this site” when deploying an app from Visual Studio 2012 to a host-named site collection in SharePoint 2013

Published at March 31, 2013 ·  1 min read

This error message occurs when you are using Visual Studio 2012 to deploy an app to a SharePoint 2013 under the following circumstances The site you are using is a host-named site collection that is not the root site collection for the web application AND the site is not a developer site To avoid this error message, you can either deploy to the root site collection of the web application (and not the host-named site collection) – which is not a valid choice sometimes...

'Database is in compatibility range and upgrade is recommended' for BDCServiceDatabase after March 2013 Upgrade

Published at March 14, 2013 ·  1 min read

After applying the March 2013 Update for SharePoint 2013 (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36989), the BDC Databases in your farm might be in a state where they need upgrade. You can review the current database status in Central Admin | Upgrade & Migration | Review database status. This state is ok, as long as it doesn’t last too long. But at one day you need to upgrade the Database. The upgrade is no problem for SPContentDatabases, just use Upgrade-SPContentDatabase....

SharePoint 2013 March Public Update released

Published at March 13, 2013 ·  1 min read

Microsoft released the March Public Update for SharePoint 2013 that is a prerequisite for all further updates: It can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36989 It is supposed to correct the problem with apps and non-default-zone addresses, and many others… Markus...

Extract .wsp files from SharePoint Config Database

Published at January 14, 2013 ·  2 min read

I recently had a customer with the need to extract a .wsp (SharePoint Solution) File from the SharePoint Farm Solutions because the source file disappeared mysteriously… As SharePoint loads the .wsp file into the config database (SharePoint_Config in most SharePoint environments – although it should be a name that you can recognize easily – you don’t name you files dok1, dok2, etc.) and stores it as binary content, it is not too hard to extract....

Cannot move video within SharePoint 2013 using drag & drop

Published at December 7, 2012 ·  2 min read

The new drag & drop functionality in SharePoint 2013 looks quite cool and seems to bring ease of use to everyone. Unfortunately this is again a feature that was not thought out: Moving around documents with the mouse works fine as long as you stay within the site. I tried this within an Assets Library – and everything was as expected except the fact that I could move an image but not a video!...

„HTTPResponseCode forbidden“ when using Office Web Apps 2013 with SharePoint 2013 over http

Published at November 20, 2012 ·  1 min read

It should be a security best practice to use Office Web Apps 2013 over https only. But just in case you want to use http (e.g. for a demo environment) you have to enable oAuthOverHTTP for your SharePoint 2013 Farm. Enter the following commands on your SharePoint Management Shell (not on the Web Apps Server): $config = (Get-SPSecurityTokenServiceConfig) $config.AllowOAuthOverHttp = $true $config.Update() Markus...

Open documents from file share with Office Web Apps 2013

Published at November 20, 2012 ·  1 min read

You can use the new Office Web Apps 2013 Server not only for opening/viewing documents from SharePoint 2013 but also to open files directly from a URL or a file share. The link has to look like the following: http://webappsserver/op/view.aspx?src=If you do not want to build the path manually, there is a web page that does the generation of the URL or the -Code for you: http://webappsserver/hosting -> redirects to: http://webappsserver/op/generate....

SharePoint 2013 RTM ready for download at MSDN (as well as Exchange 2013, Office 2013, etc.)

Published at October 25, 2012 ·  1 min read

With great pleasure I noticed that Microsoft made RTM of Wave 15 ready for download at MSDN. At the moment only the English Version is available, but I guess other languages will follow soon. Have fun with the new version! Markus...

How to create a new GeoLocation field in SharePoint 2013 using PowerShell

Published at October 15, 2012 ·  1 min read

SharePoint 2013 has this new cool fieldtype called “GeoLocation”. This field allows us to save coordinates and show the location via Bing Maps: Unfortunately, this field type can only be created via Custom Code. One way is the Client Object Model, another one is PowerShell: $web=get-spweb http://sp2013 $list=$web.lists[“CustomList”] $list.fields.AddFieldAsXml("") $list.Update() You need to add a Bing Maps Key to your SharePoint Farm in order to be able to show geographical data using Bing Maps:...

Error: Controltemplate not found in ~/_controltemplates/<name-of-usercontrol.ascx>

Published at October 9, 2012 ·  1 min read

When creating a SharePoint Control with a ControlSrc pointing to a user control (for example to replace the SmallSearchInputBox), you might get an error in the ULS log saying that the control cannot be found in ~/_controltemplates/<name_of_usercontrol.ascx> although the file exists in the correct directory. This happens when using SharePoint 2013 and forget to add the correct SharePoint version to the path. In our case this should be ~/_controltemplates/15/<name_of_usercontrol.ascx> Markus...

SP 2013 Beta 2: Bug in Machine Translation/Word Automation/PowerPoint Automation Service - Service Application not available

Published at September 28, 2012 ·  1 min read

Machine Translation Services (as well as Word Automation Services and PowerPoint Automation Services) throw an Exception “Service Application is unavailable”, if the Application Pool Account of the Service Application does not have a local profile (Windows Profile, not SharePoint). The workaround is quite simple: log on as the Service Account on the SharePoint Maschine – or execute “runas /u:domain\appPoolAccount cmd”. Hopefully this will be fixed in RTM. Markus...

Warm up your SharePoint Application Pools with Application Initialization for IIS 8 and 7.5

Published at September 2, 2012 ·  1 min read

To take away the pain of bothering about warming up our SharePoint Environment, Microsoft introduced the Application Initialization Module for IIS 8 and 7.5. There was a module in beta status for quite a long time – and then it was retracted. Now it’s back as a combination of global and application-specific rules that work not only for SharePoint 2013 but for SharePoint 2010 as well. Follow these instructions and get rid of your warmup scripts ;-)...

Who moved my cheese? Getting back the “Sign in as different user” in SharePoint 2013 the RIGHT way!

Published at August 30, 2012 ·  1 min read

Microsoft decided to remove the “Sign in as different user” link from the personal menu – at least in SharePoint 2013 Beta 2 (SharePoint 2013 Preview). Of course you could start IE as a different user – but sometimes this is not an option. There are several recommendations out there to change the “Welcome.ascx” file in order to get the menu entry back. But bear in mind that changing OOB SharePoint Files is not the way that we want to go – especially when thinking about enlarging the farm (or upgrading, or …)....