Sharepointology » Setup

File is checked out or locked for editing by someone else

Erwin — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:38:02 +0000

After upgrading some workstations to Windows 7 / 64b, users started having problems while saving big Excels. Sometimes when they open up a big Excel they get an empty error dialog window.

After editing and trying to save the document they get the following of 2 errors, they change from time to time, but most of the time it is the “File is checked out or locked for editing by someone else” error.

I noticed the error only appearing with big Excel documents so after some trial and error I found out the erros started appearing when the file was > 50.000.000 bytes. I knew the default file upload size in SharePoint is 50 MB, but this is quite easy to change. Go to Central Administration -> Web Application General Settings. Select the Web Application you want to change, and you will see a textbox to specify the maximum upload size. Problem solved? Not. I should have known because users on WinXP systems weren’t experiencing the same problems, so it had to be something client side.

After some googling I found the following Microsoft KB: You receive a folder copy error message when you try to download a file that is larger than 50000000 bytes from a Web folder. It was a long shot because there was nothing about SharePoint in the KB, but I tried. And, to my surprise, after changing the registry setting, all worked fine! No more errors!

No related posts.

SharePoint Connections 2010 Amsterdam Videos

Erwin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:52:51 +0000

You can find most of the videos from the SharePoint Connections 2010 conference in Amsterdam by searching for the “SPC10” tag on Channel9.

SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 and Silverlight 4 Beta available

Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Erwin — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:03:11 +0000

Microsoft announced that Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 has been released to the Microsoft Download Center.

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007 is now FREE

Erwin — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:40:31 +0000

The rumor that, starting from 01 April 2009, Microsoft SharePoint Designer was going to be available as a free download has been going around for a couple weeks.

Today Microsoft makes this official with an update on their SharePoint Designer page.

For end users, Microsoft SharePoint Designer opens the door to more advanced customizations, but take care because you can ruin your site in a matter of minutes with SPD.

Microsoft also wrote an open letter to their customers about the change in licensing. You can find some quick answers on common questions about the change.

If you have already made an investment in Office SharePoint Designer and Software Assurance take a look at this blog post.

Add Farm Administrator by using STSADM

Erwin — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 18:40:41 +0000

Don’t know how, don’t know when (Vera Lynn), but one day we lost access to our SharePoint Central Administration. The reason of this was that someone deleted the BUILTIN\Administrators from the Farm Administrators group.

No problem, just add the BUILTIN\Administrators back to the Farm Administrators Group.

But how do you do this without access to the Central Administration?

Well, after some searching and googling I found a solution. You can use STSADM to add people to groups in a Site Collection and the Central Administration is just another Site Collection.

I know the suspense is killing you so here ‘s the STSADM command:

stsadm -o adduser -url http://server:12345 -userlogin BUILTIN\Administrators -useremail admin@company.com -group “Farm Administrators” -username “Administrators”

No related posts.

Add Web Parts to DispForm, EditForm or NewForm.aspx

Erwin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 09:29:45 +0000

One of the users of our SharePoint project asked if it was possible to show an “Item List” on the “View Item” page.

My first reaction was: “Of course it is, add a Web Part displaying the “Item List” to the page and we’re done”.

But when I browsed to the “View Item” page and clicked the “Site Actions” I noticed that there wasn’t an “Edit Page” option available. Strange, but after some -Googling- I found the following sollution:

Open IExplorer and navigate to your “View Item” page (DispForm.aspx)
Replace everything in the URL after “?ID=#“ with “&PageView=Shared&ToolPaneView=2″ (without the quotes of course) and press

After adding a Web Part to the page and saving it, the “Edit Page” option will be available the next time you click “Site Actions” on that Page.

Dropdown to change the View disappeared

Change email address that Requests For Access get send to

Erwin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:05:37 +0000

Whenever a user tries to access a page that he doesn’t have access to he get’s the following screen:

At the bottom of the screen he can Request access. When he click’s the Request Access link he can enter a message that get’s emailed.

But where can you find/change the email address that get’s used to send these requests to?

When you are on a site, go to Site Settings and choose Advanced Permissions, click on the menu Settings and choose Access Requests. This will give you the email address used for requests from within that site. Since you can grant access at Library and Item level, these Libraries and Items will inherit the setting from the site that they are on. You are not allowed to change the email address at those sub levels, but you can disable the feature on them (i.e. for a whole library disable the Request Access feature).

Dropdown to change the View disappeared

Erwin — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:38:07 +0000

When you go to a document library or list in Sharepoint 2007, you see a dropdown in which you can select a different view or create a new view if you have the right permissions.

If you ever find yourself thinking “Where did the change the view dropdown go?”

Don’t worry, one of two things could have happened.

You added a second document library webpart on your page, but this would be obvious because you would see two webparts, one with a dropdown and one without it.
Your user (or yourself) -closed- the webpart and added it again, leaving the closed webpart on the page, but hidden. This one is harder to detect, because you only see the webpart without the dropdown.

How do you fix this?

In the first case there isn’t much of a problem, you -delete- the second webpart from the page or you leave it on there (but without the dropdown).

For the second case you’ll have to edit the page (Site Actions, Edit Page), press Add a Web Part. At the bottom of the dialog is a link “Advanced Web Part gallery and options“, click it. A side bar “Add Web Parts” appears. Below the “Select the collection you want to browse.” is a link called “Closed Web Parts“, when you click it the Web Part List with closed Web Parts appears. Select the Document Library Web Part and click the “Add” button on the bottom of the screen. The page will show the two Web Parts, -delete- the one without the dropdown and you’re back in business.

Why? A web part which shows a list is supposed to display only one view of the list at a time. But you can definitely change the view by modifying the shared web part properties.

Enforce Check Out in Sharepoint

Erwin — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 13:32:29 +0000

With Sharepoint 2007 it is possible to enforce a user to check out a document before he is allowed to edit the document. You can do this at the bottom of the versioning settings page.

When you want to edit a document and you didn’t check it out you get the following warning:

If you choose OK, edit the document and save it you’ll be asked to check in the document, to leave it checked out or to discard your changes and undo the check out: