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I’ve recently upgraded from IE 8 to IE 9 on my Windows 7 machine and started noticing some strange behavior. When I want to save “bookmarks” I usually just drag the URL to a folder on my computer instead of actually creating a bookmark within the application. I seem less likely to forget about going back to them later this way.

Since the upgrade I’ve noticed inconsistencies with these shortcuts. When I double-click on them, some would open in a new tab while others would open in a completely new window. Those who know me would initially think “You have too many tabs open, so it’s opening the overflow into new windows” – but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

I’m not sure if it’s strictly the shortcuts from after the upgrade that are exhibiting this behavior, or just some of them (I haven’t done enough testing). I do know that at a minimum that it is not a random behavior – it’s always the same shortcuts that open in a new window.

My IE preferences are already configured to always open links and pop-ups in new tabs, so that wasn’t it, and viewing the properties of the shortcuts didn’t see to help either. I figured I’d try to edit the shortcuts and see if I could figure out what the difference was that caused this behavior. Bingo! I should have looked a little closer at the shortcut properties.

The shortcuts that opened in new tabs were “.url” files, while the shortcuts that opened in new windows are “.website” files. There’s about twice as much data in the shortcuts that open new windows, and all had different GUIDs. The shortcuts that opened in new tabs seemed to have all the same generic content with the exception of the URL propertly. Also, the .website shortcuts are called “Pinned Site Shortcuts” while the .url shortcuts are called “Internet Shortcuts”. I was able to copy the URL from one of the new-window shortcuts and paste it into one of the new-tab files and save it with a new name and it worked beautifully.

What a frustration. Now I have to figure out how to create the appropriate shortcut types on-demand.

Here is an example of the contents of a .website file:

[{000214A0-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]
Prop4=31,Page Title Here
Prop3=19,11
[{A7AF692E-098D-4C08-A225-D433CA835ED0}]
Prop5=3,0
Prop9=19,0
Prop2=65,2C0000000000000001000000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF840000005C000000F0040000860300007A
[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://google.com
IDList=
[{9F4C2855-9F79-4B39-A8D0-E1D42DE1D5F3}]
Prop5=8,Microsoft.Website.1E0E98C3.ED613691


And here is an example of the contents of a .url file:
[{000214A0-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]
Prop3=19,11
[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://google.com
IDList=


Quick tip for you today! I need to do some math on months and don’t want require the users to enter a full date. I created the “Month” column as a number field, no decimals, not required, min value 1, max value 12. Now I’m able to do any calculation that I want on the month value, but my views and DVWPs display the number, and I want to be able to display it as the actual month from time to time.

Attempts:
I created a calculated column that I titled “MonthName”. Here are some quick formulas that you can use in your calculated column that will convert your 1-12 number into a month name.

=TEXT([MonthNumColumn],"mmmm") will give you “December” for a value of “12″
=TEXT([MonthNumColumn],"mmm") will give you “Dec” for a value of “12″
HOWEVER, this seemed to only return values for December and January – and they were not actually accurate.

I thought that perhaps it was because the numbers were not all 2 digit, so I created a second calculated column that I titled “MonthNN” and used this formula (I know, starting to go down the rabbit hole):
=TEXT([Month],"00")
And then adjusted the above calculated MonthName field to refer to this new calculated column. No change.

Then I attempted to use the “CHOOSE” function, but the “Month” field was not required and returned “#VALUE!” for any blank fields.

So I nested the CHOOSE function inside an IF statement, and it’s not the most elegant, but it works:
=IF(Month="","NA",CHOOSE(Month,"Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","Jul","Aug","Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec"))

Enjoy!

I’ve recently been running into problems with search on several WSS 3.0 SharePoint sites. It simply wasn’t returning results. They’re all configured the same way, so it’s no surprise that they’re all experiencing this problem. If it was MOSS, I would’ve had this resolved by now. I’m just not as fluent with WSS and familiar with its limitations. I’ve run out of GoogleFu mojo on this one, and ended up having to go through trial-by-error and spending several days banging my head on my desk before I figured it out. So here it is! (more…)

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned about SharePoint, it’s that there’s about a dozen different approaches that you can take to implement just about anything in it. The “choice” field in SharePoint is no different.

The direct approach is to open the settings of your list or library, and add a new column of type “Choice”. Populate the choice options in the settings, and choose your choice “type” (dropdown, radio, checkbox). The down side to that is in order to edit or add new choices, more than contributor access is required. In many cases, the power users want to be able to add new choices without having to ask for assistance, but we don’t necessarily want to grant additional access in most cases. (more…)

Sure, you can find posts and articles out there with lists of character limitations and restrictions for List and Site names and URLs for SharePoint, but what about combinations of legal characters that will cause you problems? (more…)