My SharePoint Adventures

Requirement

Calculated columns by default appear on all out of the box display forms due to the fact that they are ‘optional’ when applied to the list / content type. There is no way to change it to hidden using the Web GUI.

Solution:

You will need to use SharePoint Designer to be able to set the column to Hidden.

1. Open the site in SharePoint Designer, ensure you have the appropriate level of permissions.
2. Click on Lists and Libraries
3. Select the List / Library you wish to modify.
4. Under Content Types, select the Content Type that has the calculated column.
5. Under Content Type, click Edit Content Type Columns.
6. On the columns editor, click on the calculated column you wish to edit.
7. On the Property column, click ONCE on the word ‘Optional’ and wait. It will take 1-2 seconds before you see a dropdown box.
8. Select the Hidden option, click  Push Changes to Sites and Lists and Save.

Your column should now be hidden.

Problem:

You try to check in a file in a SharePoint document library and you are asked to ensure all mandatory fields are not blank. However, all the fields on the form have been completed.

Cause:

This problem is most likely caused by required columns that have been set to hidden in the content types.

Solution:

Check the content types in the library for hidden columns. Reset the columns back to ‘Optional’ and then ‘Hidden’ again.

Problem

You set up an alert on a mail-enabled AD security group. Users are able to receive the subscription e-mail confirming that they have been subscribed to the list. However, no alerts are received for any of the events configured.

Solution:

Check that the AD group you subscribed has at least ‘View Only’ permissions to the site. Without permissions to the site, users in the AD group will not be able to receive any alerts.

Problem

You have InfoPath 2013 running on your computer. When you try to customize an InfoPath form template from a workflow in SharePoint Designer 2010, nothing happens. The form does not open in InfoPath.

Work-around

Install InfoPath 2010 along-side your Office 2013 installation and restart SharePoint Designer. Your form should now open in InfoPath 2010.

Problem

One of our users had a problem opening an excel document in Excel 2007/ When she clicked on ‘Open in Excel’ followed by ‘Edit and Checkout, using local drafts folder’, excel would open the document but she would not be able to check it back in. Excel would prompt her that a local copy is already checked out. If she continued, she would be prompted to save a copy of the file in a temp folder.

Forcing SharePoint not to use the local drafts folder resulted in an error  – unable to convert file.

Solution

In the end, what I ended up doing was running a repair on her Office installation.

Open Excel -> Excel Options -> Resources -> Diagnose

Restart IE and excel once you have run the diagnostic wizard and everything should go back to normal.