SharePoint lists

Create views in SharePoint that only show items created by current user

AnthonyLeave a comment

This is an oldie but a goodie in my opinion, this post will show you how to use library filters in SharePoint to only show items/ files created, or modified by the current user.

The steps below will guide you through the process of updating the view of a list or library to only show items created or modified by the current, logged in user.

  • Open the list or library you wish to update
  • From the library actions ribbon > select the current view (for example: all documents)
  • Press edit current view
  • Scroll down the edit view page until you get to the filter section
  • Create the following filter:

NOTE: this example will only show items that were created by OR modified by the current, logged in user. If you want your filter to only show items where both these values are true, change OR to AND.

  • Press OK to save your changes

Now your view should have updated to only show items created by, or modified by the current, logged in user.

Considerations

This example is really simple and easy to implement and there isn’t any real impact on your users as nothing is technically being restricted, just filtered out of the default view.

The flip-side of this is that in of itself could be considered a limitation if there is information stored within the list/ library that requires limited permissions. I’ll go into the options available for this later in this post.

However with that said, depending on what permissions you have in place for your list/ library, you could use this approach to secure the contents too.

Consideration #1 – Views don’t change permissions

A “back door” to gaining access to all contents stored in the list/ library would be to use a different view than the set default view to access all items (for example: if you created a new view to follow the below method, but left the default view set to show everything).

The solution to this would be to apply this filter approach to the default view, make sure any other public views follow the same approach and make sure end users don’t have elevated permissions.

Consideration #2 – Ensure permissions are set correctly

The only way an end user could bypass this approach without any “all items” views available, would be if they had the permissions to do so. The permission that controls this is called the Manage Lists permission, which is only granted via the Edit, Design, Full Control, Manage Hierarchy permission levels by default.

If end users aren’t in these groups, your in luck!

Consideration #3 – list/ library contents is not searchable

If you are using views to filter who can see contents within your list/ library then you will need to ensure this setting is updated if the contents needs to be hidden (below example is a document library):

  • Press the cog button > library settings
  • Press advanced settings
  • Under Search > change allow items from this document library to appear in search results to No
  • Press OK
Update the allow items from this document library to appear in search results advanced setting to ensure items aren’t visible in search.

Consideration #4 – If it’s a list, enable item level permissions

With lists, in advanced settings there is an additional configuration option – item level permissions which allows you to specify which items users can read and edit.

As the heading implies, this consideration only works for lists in SharePoint as the functionality isn’t available out the box for document libraries. SharePoint Maven have written up what the two different levels of item level permissions you can set mean, which you can find here.

Advertisement

How to create a custom ID for lists and libraries

Anthony8 Comments

In this example I demonstrate how to create a simple solution that allows users to submit a request to a list, then a workflow fires that updates the request ID field with our custom ID number.

Classic SharePoint
Modern SharePoint

ID numbers, reference numbers, ticket numbers…this is something that regularly gets asked to be a part of any SharePoint solution or request based system. My first thought when this is required is “easy, we can just use the SharePoint item ID column and use that”. However, creating a simple calculated column that leverages the in-built ID column is not as easy as it seems.

My first attempt at creating a custom ID column involved creating a new calculated column, and appending some text before the ID and then inserting the ID column into the formula, like this:

="REQ-00"&[ID]

The problem with this approach is that when new items are added, the ID appears to “slip” resulting in the custom ID column having no ID number being pulled from the SharePoint ID.

Custom ID column – modern SharePoint

1. Pre-requisites

Before you begin you will naturally need to create either a list or library in SharePoint, and the relevant apps checked as part of your O365 license.

2. The setup

  • Create a new column, with the type Number – I called this ‘solIncrementNum‘
  • Create a new column, with the type Calculated – I called this ‘solReqNum‘, later renamed ‘Request Number’
    • In the formula field, add the following: ="SOL-00"&[SolIncrementNum]
    • For the Data Type, select Single line of text
Setting the formula for the solReqNum column in list settings

NOTE: for the Request Number formula if you want to prefix your custom ID with something else just replace what’s between the ” “ in the formula field above.

3. Build the Flow

Flow action: when a new item is created

  • Create a new flow from the template “when a new item is created, complete a custom action”
  • Give your Flow a name, I called mine “Populate Solution Request Number”
  • In the “when a new item is added” step, make sure the site address and list name are the same as the list you built the custom ID column for earlier
Step 1 of the Populate Solution Request Flow

Flow: update item

  • Press + New step, start typing “update item”, select the update item action from the selection
  • Select the site in question, then copy and paste the List Name from the previous action
  • Make sure this action has the following fields set:
    • Id: ID
    • Title: Title
    • solIncrementNum: ID

NOTE: make sure that when you set these fields, that the values you use are coming from the “when a new item is created” action.

Step 2 of the Populate Solution Request Flow

Now when new items are created within the list or library, the flow will fire and create a new request number.

Modern SharePoint list with Flow that populates Request Number
Pages: 1 2

How to set the default value of a lookup field

AnthonyLeave a comment

(this post was written using a SharePoint 2010 environment)

If you are using lookup columns in your SharePoint environment, one thing you may want to do is set the column that appears first, or is the default value in the lookup list when a document is uploaded into a library.

Now this solution is not a no code solution, but it requires very little code and is really straight forward to read and understand…

Step one – prerequisites

My setup to achieve this contained the following:

  • A custom list with each lookup value as a seperate list item (name stored in Title column)
  • A document library with a lookup column looking at the title in the custom list

Step two – configure the edit form

  • Open the list which is using the lookup column, make a note of the display name of the column

NOTE
This caught me out while configuring, I naturally took the field name of the column from the URL string as opposed to the column name displayed in the edit form, make sure you use the latter as the field name won’t work.

  • Navigate to the lookup list where the lookup column is pointed to
  • Open the item in this list that you wish to be the default value
  • Open an item in a new window, in the address bar look for ID= and make a note of the number value as this is used for later
  • Navigate to the libraries edit form (just add /Forms/EditForm.aspx after the name of your list or library)
  • Press Site Actions > Edit Page
  • Add a web part > add a content editor web part to the page
  • Click inside the content editor web part > Under Editing Tools > Format Text press the HTML, Edit HTML Source button

Step three – add the code

  • In the HTML Source window, paste in the following:
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.0.min.js"> </script>

<script type="text/javascript">

$(document).ready(function() {

$("select[Title='lookup']").val('1');

});

</script>
  • You will need to change the [Title=’lookup’] to be the name of the lookup column as described earlier
  • You will also need to edit the number after .val to be the ID number of the lookup list item we made a note of earlier
  • Under the Page Tab > Press Stop Editing, make sure to save your changes

Test your changes!

Now when you upload a new document, your lookup column will default to the value we have specified!


How to group by date chronologically for library views

AnthonyLeave a comment

(this post was written using a SharePoint 2010 environment)

So here’s the scenario, we have a document library that contains agendas, minutes, reports and other files related to meetings. The document library has a custom column called ‘Meeting Date’, a date column that is mandatory for all files that are uploaded.

We are required to create a view that is grouped by meeting date, sorted chronologically. Let’s give it a go!

Step one – prerequisites

My setup to achieve this was as follows:

  • A document library
  • An additional date column ‘Meeting Date’

Step two – configure the library

  • Navigate to the document library
  • Create a new calculated column called ‘Month of Meeting’
  • In the Formula section, add the following:
=IF([Meeting Date]="","Empty",("0"&MONTH([Meeting Date])&"/"&RIGHT(YEAR([Meeting Date]),4)))

NOTE
This formula basically states that if Meeting Date is blank, show Empty, if the meeting date has a value format it as MONTH (0 in front of the month number) / YEAR (yyyy).

  • Make sure the data type returned is ‘single line of text’
  • Press OK

Test your changes!

Now we have created a calculated column, we can test our changes by adding the column to a view and checking the Month of Meeting column has values.

Step two – create the view

Now we have verified our formula is working, we can start building out our view based on the requirements.

  • Navigate to the document library
  • Under Library Tools > Library > Create View
  • Scroll down to Group By, then group by Month of Meeting in ascending order
  • Press OK

NOTE
In the Group By section, you can set whether the groups are open or closed by default by choosing either collapsed (closed), or expanded (open).

You can also change the default number of groups to display from 30, but beware of slower page loading if you set it too high.

Now our view is configured we can take a look at it in all its chronological glory!

If you want to find out more about using group views, take a look at another post I wrote on ways around the 10 item limit in choice columns.

How to link to view item from any field in a SharePoint list

AnthonyLeave a comment

(this post was written using a SharePoint Server 2010 environment)

This is a variation on a theme and something I have used quite a bit over the years to change the link to the item display view from the default title or name field or another field of my choosing.

Changing the item link to another field or field(s)

  • Open SharePoint Designer
  • Enter the URL of your list or library site collection > Open
  • Navigate to the list or library you wish to change > Click to open it
  • in the Views section, open the view you wish to edit
  • in the Ribbon, turn on Advanced Mode
  • In the code view, look for the ViewFields section
<ViewFields>
	<FieldRef Name="Title"/>
	<FieldRef Name="Created"/>
	<FieldRef Name="DateStarted"/>
</ViewFields>
  • Highlight the Field you want to create a link from and add the following
<ViewFields>
	<FieldRef Name="Title" LinkToItem="TRUE"/>

You can add LinkToItem=”TRUE” to any, or as many of the fields as you wish, the end result will mean that each column in the list view you have added the above to will be click-able.

Add a link to the edit item menu

As I was writing this up, I came across the post below which also adds the extra option of creating a link to the item’s edit menu to, so full props go to the SharePoint Diary site for this one!

http://www.sharepointdiary.com/2016/04/show-link-to-item-edit-menu-on-any-column-in-sharepoint-list.html

If you do want to extend this to have the drop-down item edit menu, just add ListItemMenu=”TRUE” to the field in SharePoint Designer. You can add this after the LinkToItem=”TRUE” and to multiple columns in the list view. 

<ViewFields>
	<FieldRef Name="NameOfTeam" LinkToItem="TRUE" ListItemMenu="TRUE"/>
	<FieldRef Name="Category" ListItemMenu="TRUE"/>
	<FieldRef Name="Created"/>
	<FieldRef Name="Author"/>
</ViewFields>

Looking for all of the available data types?

You can get a list of all the internal data types and their descriptions from the the link below:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/developer/sharepoint-2010/ms437580(v%3doffice.14)

Problems creating list or library views based on created date

AnthonyLeave a comment

The situation

Data retention and deletion…I’m sure this is a something that anyone involved in Office 365, SharePoint on information management in general gets fed up of saying since the recent GDPR legislation!

Recently we have been rationalising and cleaning up our data in preparation for moving to Office 365. We are starting with SharePoint as the first target repository or silo of content.

The general consensus is to delete files and folders over 7 years old unless there is a pre-existing data retention policy to adhere to. So the next task is to identify those files that fall within our threshold, and ultimately delete.

Luckily, we have Tree Size Pro and ShareGate so I was able to relatively easily identify the files in question (there were a lot!).

The setup

As our SharePoint environment is a) rather full; and b) rather old, I made the decision to incrementally delete files rather than en-masse to mitigate risk, targeting the lists/libraries containing the most out of date content. I started by creating a view in the first library – library A with the following parameters:

  • Standard library view
  • Filtered by Created Date if less than or equal to 01/01/2011
  • Folders or Flat: Show items inside folders
    Show this view: In all folders

(all other settings are left default)

Results this returned looked good, I could see folders and files in this view that matched the criteria – brilliant! Based on my previous statement I decided to delete in batches out of working hours, again to mitigate risk. I deleted first from library A, then from the first stage and finally from the second stage recycle bin all in this fashion.

The problem

I had permanently deleted around 50% of the total volume of content to be deleted from library A when we started to receive reports of current files being ‘missing’ from library A…not a good day.

After these reports were investigated they were indeed true. It turns out that when folders are included within a library view, folders that match the filter will be shown in the view, regardless of whether the files inside match.

We tested the view exluding folders and all the files returned matched the filter criteria. The same results were demonstrated from a SharGate report of the same nature. The report of all files over 7 years old brought back folders over 7 years old, but they also contained files that were newer.

Conclusion

At present, we are not entirely sure as to why these filters are not able to drill down past a top-level folder. It appears to be difficult to specify via view settings to only show files within folders, including the folder itself that matches the criteria.

We have decided to omitt folders from our reports and views going forward and to solely focus on files as this is the most reliable way we can delete files.

Bonus: for those of you with ShareGate, heres an example of my report we created to bring back all files over 7 years old, excluding folders. I ran this report across the entire intranet application over a weekend and it worked a treat 🙂

SG-report

Fix pages with no publishing options in SharePoint

AnthonyLeave a comment

(This post was written using a SharePoint 2010 environment)

So you’ve got a SharePoint site, it all looks good (well, as good as it can!) but you notice that the Publish tab isn’t available in the ribbon.

First things first you check the site settings to see if SharePoint Server Publishing is turned on.

SP2010-publishing-feature.png

If you get to this point and your still no further forward it’s likely that your site wasn’t set up as a publishing site, but if you follow the steps below and your pages will be able to be published in no time.

  1. Open the site in question, then go to Site Actions > View All Site Content
  2. Open the SitePages library
  3. Under Library Tools > Library, select Library Settings

    SP2010-librarysettings
  4. Under General Settings > Versioning Settings, turn on Create major and minor (draft) versions > press OK
    SP2010-versioning

  5. Go back to the original page, you will now see the publishing tab has appeared!

Ways around the 10 item number order limit in choice columns

Anthony1 Comment

I was recently updating a view in a SharePoint List, the view was set up to use metadata fields to sort and group the content…lovely stuff. What I was required to do was to implement a choice field with a numerical order within it (i.e. 1. First step, 2. Second step, 3. Third step).

With sort order in List/Library views, it works with either alphabetical or numerical options ascending or descending. What I found was with choice fields operating as the number order, once you hit 10 the numbering system went out the window!

What you end up with is something like this:

1) First choice
11) Eleventh choice
12) Twelfth choice
2) Second choice
3) Third choice

and so on…

By default, SharePoint interperates the choice field as alphabetical so the way I got around this was to just use:

a)
b)
c)

This gets around any issues with numerical values over 10 or having to create lookup lists or anything else 🙂

How to find open with explorer in modern SharePoint libraries

Anthony3 Comments

Explorer view in classic SharePoint sites has been a widely used bypass for users actually interacting with SharePoint libraries for a number of years.

Now in some cases that’s for good reason, from being able to upload multiple files easily in older versions of SharePoint to a familiar navigation of nested folder structure.

With modern SharePoint libraries, the old school ribbon has gone the way of the dodo…and so it seemed had open with explorer.

But fear not! If you still use IE you can still use the trusty open with explorer

How to open with explorer

  • Go to the library that you wish to open with explorer
  • On the right-hand side, press the drop-down icon next to all documents
    all-documents2.jpg
  • Press View in File Explorer
    file-explorer

Some weird stuff will then happen, where a classic 2013 version of your SharePoint site/library will open in a new tab and for me I got a message at the bottom of the browser window to allow popups from Microsoft then got another, more serious popup like this (multiple times):

IE-security

I pressed allow to all of these then voila! we have file explorer!

PLEASE NOTE:

File explorer only works for Internet Explorer, I tested in IE11 and it categorically doesn’t work in Firefox, Chrome, Edge or Edge Dev (beta).

Creating a new item from SharePoint Workflow – trailing space issue

AnthonyLeave a comment

I wanted to post this as I was banging my head against a brick wall for hours recently with this issue. Full credit goes to this stack overflow thread that described pretty much exactly what I was experiencing:

https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/112353/spd-2010-workflow-intermittent-item-creation-issue

However, my situation was a little different so thought I would post this in case it helps someone else in future!

The details

SharePoint 2010 environment using a standard SharePoint Designer workflow. Straight-forward workflow that runs once a list item is created, creates a document set in a separate library, then updates the list item with a link to the document set (plus some other item metadata). All this is wrapped up in an impersonation step that uses a site collection admin user account.

Why an impersonation step?

An impersonation step is being used because when you create a new list item using a workflow, that new item is created by the System Account. So on any new item created by a workflow, “Start workflow on create” will not work because system account is not allowed to start a workflow.

The problem

Intermittently the workflow would fail on creating the document set. The workflow status showed “The workflow could not create the list item. Make sure the list exists and the user has permissions to add items to the list.”. The outcome is “Unknown Error”.

After speaking with users this didn’t seem to affect everyone all of the time. It only affected some people occasionally but it was affecting one user way more than others.

This user was creating the list item in exactly the same way as others in the team. I overserved the user creating the list item and couldn’t see any problems with how it was being done. Yet each time we conducted a test copying field information from an existing item the workflow continued to error.

The solution

In my case, when I started to look at the list items where the workflow had failed, I noticed that the Name field for each list item contained a trailing space at the end of the text. I asked the user who this issue consistently affected to try creating new list items several times, copying the Name as normal but this time removing the trailing space and we no longer had issues!

Moral of the story…check for trailing spaces and beware!