View unpublished pages or draft pages or published pages in SharePoint

March 17, 2020 / Kannan / 2 Comments

Microsoft SharePoint Logo Sometimes it’s necessary to know the status of all the pages before a site is made live. It becomes especially difficult when a team works together on multiple pages and there are number of pages which might have not been published and site owner has to make sure all the pages are published.

We will create a view which can help a site owner to view unpublished pages or draft pages or published pages in SharePoint.

The technique is using the “Version” column to determine the decimal part of the “Version” by subtracting the integer part from the “Version”. So if there is any decimal value in the “Version” then it’s in unpublished or draft state.

Do note that this technique depends upon the “Document Version History” settings being “Create major and minor (draft) versions” for that library.

Document Version History
Document Version History settings

This involves two steps

  1. Add a calculated column which helps to determine the page state using version value.
  2. Create a new view or update an existing view to display the created calculated column.

Create column to know the page status

  1. Create a new column and name it “PageStatus” (We will later rename it to “Page Status”).
  2. Set the type to “Calculated”.
  3. Add the below formula and save the column settings. (Note: The “Version” column will not be available in “Insert Column:” pane so just copy paste the formula.)
=If((Version-INT(Version))<>0,"Draft","Published")
  1. In the library settings, click on the column to edit.
  2. Change the column name to “Page Status” and click “OK” button.
Create a column to show page status.
“Page Status” column creation

Library view to show the page status

We can either create a new view or modify an existing view to show the “Page Status”. For this all that needs to be done is add the “Page Status” column to the view.

Library view to show the “Page Status”

Prevent file download in SharePoint

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March 13, 2020 / Kannan / 0 Comments

Microsoft SharePoint LogoMicrosoft SharePoint Logo Sometimes in SharePoint there will be a scenario where users shouldn’t download documents, but yet should be able to view the documents. In many of the sites it’s mentioned that this is not possible. But in reality as of March 2020, this is possible.

Generally the permission level “View Only: Can view pages, list items, and documents. Document types with server-side file handlers can be viewed in the browser but not downloaded.” is not available by default. But the site collection feature “SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection features” when activated will enable this permissions level.

Note that this will work only for Microsoft Office files like Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. Still users will be able to download other file type. The reason is SharePoint uses handler for viewing and editing Microsoft Office files which can prevent download.

Perform the following steps to enable the permission level

  1. Launch “Site collection features” under “Site Settings”.
  2. Activate “SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection features”.
  3. Go to the library’s settings and launch “Permissions for this document library”.
  4. Enable unique permissions.
  5. Then select the specific “SharePoint group” and click “Edit User Permissions”.
  6. Now you should be able to see the permission level ” View Only: Can view pages, list items, and documents. Document types with server-side file handlers can be viewed in the browser but not downloaded.”
  7. Check that permission and uncheck all other permissions.
  8. Now all the users within that group will only be able to view the document in web-viewer and will not be able to download.

Before applying permission

The “Download” menu is visible. Clicking “Open” will open the file in web viewer.

After applying permissions

The “Download” menu is not visible. Clicking “Open” will open the file in web viewer.

SharePoint Online theme error – There was an error while attempting to get the themes

March 5, 2020 / Kannan / 1 Comment

Microsoft SharePoint Logo Recently when I was trying to change the theme of a SharePoint online site collection, it threw an error “There was an error while attempting to get the themes”

The error looks like the one shown below (Taken from Microsoft Tech Community)

There was an error while attempting to get the themes

To fix this error, the easiest method as of March 2020 is do the following.

  1. Click on “Classic change the look options” menu item shown in the screenshot above.
  2. Choose one of the theme.
  3. Preview it by clicking on “Try it out”.
  4. Then click on “Yes, keep it”
  5. Again load the home page
  6. Try changing the theme, and the error should be gone.

Thanks to Rob for providing the work around here.