MOSS Search Crawler Error : Access Denied …

I was configuring SharePoint search service. when I started full crawl , it started and 1 second later ( after refresh ) it stoped and gives me this error in error log :

Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this content. (The item was deleted because it was either not found or the crawler was denied access to it.)

I searched and found the solution is : Disable the loopback check

How ?  Follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
3. Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
5. Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
7. Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.

After doing this and restarting the server, nothing happened !!

So I stoped both Windows SharePoint Services Search & Office SharePoint Server Search and then restart them again.

after I started the again, I started full crawling and it didn’t stop soon … and no error happened .

A short point about Approve Permission Level

Hi, This is a short post about permission levels for approving items :

Just be careful that if you want to create somthing like an “Approve Only” permission level in sharepoint, You must also tick “Manage Lists” permission level in permissions…

Portal Site Connection

When you use SharePoint, In the Site Setting of your Site Collection you can see that there’s a link below “Site Collection Administration” which name : Portal site connection

I always wondered what’s this link and how can I use it. I also found there’s a good blog and article here.

I found that you can use this link to connect your Current Site Collection to another site collection . Let’s see How does thi work :

The default global navigation for Site Collections ( except Root Site Collection ) is like this picture :

This site collection is created under sites path and it’s address is : http://SharepointServer/sites/TestSiteCollection/default.aspx

Then , after I created this  new test Site Collection below sites path, by using Portal Site Connection of this site, I connected it to the Root ( Main ) Site Collection .

Portal Web Address : Http://Sharepointserver

Portal Name : Root

And as the result, The navigation is now something different form the old one. This could be helpful when you don’t want to link to another site with Top Link bar or Quick Lunch.

As gavinadams in his blog said,  the Portal Site Collection option is better as it provides a context of the root site collection being ‘above’ the project site collection and allows you to save the top link bar tabs for subsites of the project or links to other sites, servers, etc.

Deploy Error : Object reference not set to an instance of an object

Sometimes when you want to deploy your solution or custom web part on the server , However everything is OK and the code is built successfully but you encounter this error.

Object reference not set to an instance of an object

It may be because of the existing deployed solutions. Mark Arend has written a good post about workaround this problem.

it is :

1. Save & Close Visual Studio
2. Retract & Remove deployed solutions. It mean the solutions that you want to deploy again. The quickest way to uninstall is to open a command window to the directory of your Project\bin\debug folder and enter setup /uninstall.  This runs faster than the solution management page in central administration Operation tab.  (that one’s performed by a timer job, which has a “now” setting but still seems to take a minute to launch itself).
3. iisreset /noforce
4. Open Visual Studio and deploy again .

No Multiple Upload ? No Connect to Outlook ?!

If by Internet Explorer you can’t see some SharePoint Document Library & List links like “Connect to Outlook” in “Action” menu or “Upload Multiple Files” in “Upload” menus in document libraries … it’s because that some SharePoint related Add-ons are disabled ! ( IE Security )

There is an ActiveX Control with name : STSSYNC

To Solve this issue in Internet Explorer 6 or 7 or 8 , go to Tools , Manage Add-ons , Enable or Disable Add-ons . Look for SharePoint Stssync handler and Enable it . Then restart your Internet Explorer . ( Close All & Open New Window )

There are also some related Add-ons that may help you Enable other functionalities:

• SharePoint Export Database Launcher –> Open with Access
  
• SharePoint OpenDocuments Calss
• SharePoint Spreadsheet Launcher –> Export To Spreadsheet
  
• SharePoint Stssync Handler –> Connect To Outlook
  
• SharePoint OpenXML Documents
  
• STS Upld Upload Ctl Class  –> Upload Multiple Docs
• Microsoft Office Visio 12 Diagram Launch Control –> Create Visio Digram

I also should Thanks to Cornell, Scott because his blog first helped me to solve this issue .

Error When Uploading Multiple Files

To fix the problem when you want to upload multiple files and you encounter this error :  Cannot run Windows SharePoint Services on this page …

Follow these steps :

You should make some changes to Upload.aspx file in layouts folder. But first make a copy of this file as a backup and then do these changes to the copied version. So you can move the original to another location and use the copied version to test if it’s successful or not.

1. Open your copy of upload.aspx with appropriate application like Visual Studio or a simple one like Notpad. Search for <input TYPE=”hidden” NAME=”_charset_” VALUE=”utf-8″><!–webbot bot=”FileUpload” endspan i-checksum=”45034″ –>
2. Update the following string as follows <input TYPE=”hidden” NAME=”Cmd” VALUE=”Save”><!–webbot bot=”FileUpload” endspan  –>
3. Save your file.
4. Reset IIS
5. Now you should be able to upload multiple files in sharepoint document libraries .

The source of this post was from Namwar Rizvi’s Sharepoint Blog . Many thanks to him for providing me this solution.

How to update a people and group field via code?

Today I was working on my custom web part. One of my questions was : after pressing submit button how to update a people and group field in the destination list.

I tested many ways and they gives me this error :

Invalid data has been used to update the list item. The field you are trying to update may be read only.

after searching and googling for some hours I found it in my way , here it is :

SPListItemCollection itemCollection;
SPListItem item;
PeopleEditor people;
PickerEntity picker;
SPUserInfo userInf;
SPUser user;

itemCollection = web.Lists["ListName"].Items;
item = itemCollection.Add();

// I arranged my controls in a table
// here is my one of people editor controls
// So after pressing submit, the account of this control should set
// new Item "Assigned To" field in the related list.
people = (PeopleEditor)Tbl.Rows[0].Cells[0].Controls[0];  
picker = (PickerEntity)people.ResolvedEntities[0];
userInf = new SPUserInfo();
user = web.EnsureUser(picker.Key);
item["Assigned To"] = user;
item.Update();

with this kind of coding my list start updating correctly ! hope this help you …

Also here is some related links that helped me :

• http://mysharepointblog.com/post/2007/07/How-to-use-the-PeoplePicker-in-SharePoint.aspx
• http://suguk.org/forums/post/13950.aspx
• http://blog.qumsieh.ca/2008/07/21/how-to-use-the-people-editor-control-loading-data-to-a-column-of-type-person-or-group/

A point about NTLM & Kerberos authentication type in Sharepoint

In Sharepoint 2007 when you want to create or extend a web application or create the central administration site ( after installing ) you know that one step is to choose authnetication type. I read a good point about one of the differences between these two types and want to share it with you

• NTLM is the default authentication type. it authenticates each user request against the domain controller. This increases the traffic to the domain controller because each user request needs to be authenticated. Therefore, NTLM authentication impacts the performance of WSS.
• If the network domain in your organization supports Kerberos, you should use Kerberos because it stores user credentials on the WSS server. As a result, the performance of WSS improves because the WSS server does not need to authenticate each user against the doamin controller.

Group cannot be found !

I would be very thankful to whom guide me how to solve this error.

In our Sharepoint Intranet in some specific situations  ( I don’t remember them ) and especially when I want to upload a picture in a picture library or when I want to edit properties of an item in a list, it gives me this error :

Group cannot be found .

of course after going back and re entering the picture library the file has been uploaded successfully but there’s always this error . Is there anyone who knows a workaround about this error ??????????

Delete All items in a Sharepoint list

I was trying to create a method to delete all items in a sharepoint list .

here is the code , It’s simple but a question remained for me at the end :

        public void DeleteAllRecords()
        {
            SPList list_a = web.Lists["UserDocs"];
            SPListItemCollection itemsCol = list_a.Items;
            if (itemsCol.Count > 0)
                for (int i = itemsCol.Count-1; i > -1; i--)
                {
                    itemsCol.Delete(i);
                }
        }

I don’t know why the “for” loop does not work when I used it in a incremental way .  I mean that I found that I should use it in a decremental way !! I’m trying to find the answer and if so I’ll post it soon.