Increasing a VMWARE virtual hard disk

vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -x

Here's an example, in which running this command increases the size of the virtual disk file "H:\VMs\W2K3\IDE00.vmdk" to 6 GB:

vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -x 6GB "H:\VMs\W2K3\IDE00.vmdk"

If you have not added the full path to vmware-vdiskmanager.exe to your Environmental Variables, you'll need to use the full path each time you runt the command.

For example:

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmware-vdiskmanager.exe" -x 6GB "H:\VMs\W2K3\IDE00.vmdk"

After you've expanded the virtual disk size, you'll also need to expand the partition.

The easiest way to do this is with Acronis Disk Director.

Just set the .iso boot disk as the virtual CD Rom on your VM and use the utility to resize. It will take you less than 1 minute.

How to determine which service pack is installed with SQL 2005

1. Open SQL Server Management Studio
2. Click on 'New Query'
3. Paste in SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('productversion'), SERVERPROPERTY ('productlevel'), SERVERPROPERTY ('edition')
   
4. Click on Execute
5. The installed SP will display on the results tab
   

VMWARE: How to access the boot menu on startup

Open up the .vmx file in notepad
Paste in the following line

bios.bootDelay = "5000"

Save and restart the virtual machine.

This will give you 5 seconds(which is more than enough to hit the ESC key and access the boot menu.

SharePoint and MOSS 2007: Microsoft Word/Office 2007 - Unable to paste from body of document into "Document Properties" / "Document Information Panel"

SharePoint and MOSS 2007: Microsoft Word/Office 2007 - Unable to paste from body of document into "Document Properties" / "Document Information Panel" Fields

Microsoft Word/Office 2007 - Unable to paste from body of document into "Document Properties" / "Document Information Panel" Fields

We're implementing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and are in the process of upgrading clients to Office 2007. I've noticed something very strange during testing though....Word won't let users copy text from the document body and paste into any of the fields on the Document Information Panel.

The problem seems to be intermittent and we can't work out what's causing it.

Interestingly, you can copy and paste text from the word document body into a notepad file and then copy the same text from the notepad file directly into word....any ideas on whether this a bug or how to configure word to get around this rather glaring limitation?

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On further investigation, I think it might have something to do with the fact that the SharePoint metadata fields we're trying to paste into in the Document Information Panel are "Enhanced Rich Text".... I'm lead to believe this because we've encountered issues when trying to enter information into this field in the "Datasheet View"....

After downgrading the column type at the Site Collection level to "Rich Text" - the problem appears to have gone away *and* we can type into this field in a Datasheet view without getting the pesky error message "This cell is read only".

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I'll need a few additional days to confirm if my suspicions are correct...I really hope they are though, because users are going to freak-out if they have to manually type in a document summary and title for every document we migrate to SharePoint.

Microsoft Word/Office 2007 - Unable to paste from body of document into "Document Properties" / "Document Information Panel" Fields

We've deployed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and upgraded our clients to Office 2007. We've noticed something very strange and very concerning though...Word won't let users copy text from the document body and paste into any of the fields on the Document Information Panel. Interestingly, you can copy and paste text from the word document body into a notepad file and then copy the same text from the notepad file directly into word....any ideas on whether this a bug or how to configure word to get around this rather glaring limitation?

.doc to .pdf converter for SharePoint/MOSS/WSS - Scrapped prior to RTM

Frustrated that I've been unable to find out more about my previous post, I decided to ramp up my research...

Spoke to Bill English personally today (thank you very much for your time) and he tells me that this functionality was actually removed from the product between one of the early pre-release versions and the final (RTM) version. Such a shame...am going to get in touch with Microsoft to see if I can find out why and if there is any other alternative.

Basically what I'm looking for is a way for users to be able to convert documents which live in a SharePoint library to PDF, on-the-fly while retaining the existing content type and populated metadata....

Have scoured high and low to no real avail and I'm now seriously considering buying Bamboo Solutions's Office to PDF Conversion Solution Accelerator - Release 1.2

It convert Office Documents to PDF on a pre-determined schedule.

I will report back more when I learn more

.doc to .pdf converter for SharePoint/MOSS/WSS

In Bill English's book "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server - Administrator's Companion" he says on pg 14, paragraph 4 that "Windows SharePoint Services includes a new transformation feature. Assume you need the ability to automatically save documents in PDF format. Now all you need to do is install the .doc to .pdf transformer, and that transformer will show up on all the menus for documents in Windows SharePoint Services so that it can be leveraged across the enterprise. This feature is installed and managed centrally, but it's consumed (potentially) across the sites in the enterprise."

My searches to locate such a converter or instructions for installing a converter have failed (or maybe I've just been staring at this screen for too long). In any case, I'm putting it out there in the hope you might know. Please leave your comments if you do, I would be most grateful!!

drew

Install Adobe PDF Icon and IFilter for SharePoint/WSS/MOSS 2007

1. Download and install Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 on the server (the reader now includes the iFilter by default, previously you had to install the iFilter separately)
2. Add the PDF file type to your search index (note that this has to be completed for each index, i.e. each Shared Service)
1. Open your Search Settings - SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration - SharedServices1 - Search Settings
2. Select File Types
3. Click Add File Type
4. Enter pdf in the text box (labelled File extension) and click OK
3. Download the PDF icon (select 'small 17 x 17') from http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html
   1. Give the icon a name (I use pdficon.gif)
   2. Save the icon in c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES
4. Edit the Docicon.xml file to include the PDF icon
1. Navigate to c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML
2. Open the DOCICON.XML file in Notepad (or an XML editor). You should see that the file has two main tags - ByProgID and ByExtension
3. Within the ByExtension tag, add an entry for the PDF icon 'Mapping Key="pdf" Value="pdficon.gif" /' (replace the single quotes with angle brackets)
4. Save and close the file
5. Perform a full crawl of your content sources

Upload Multiple Documents to SharePoint and Apply Metadata

This is actually my first blog ever, so forgive me if I don't observe any of the traditional blogging protocols!

I have just been doing some research on whether there is any fast and easy way to apply metadata to multiple documents when you're uploading them into a SharePoint library using the "Upload Multiple Documents' feature.

I found Dustin Millers blog; Document Libraries and Subfolders: Why it's a bad idea most useful, in which one of his respondants reccommends upload ing multiple documents and then manually apply the metadata for each record via a document library datasheet view.

This method is fine when you're working with a small number of documents, but if you're migrating a large number, this method obviously becomes very time consuming and tedious, particularly if you have multiple mandatory fields which won't allow you to use the 'Fill Down' feature of the datasheet view.

I figure one way around this is to make all metadata fields non-mandatory initially and then once the metadata is applied, apply mandatory rules later. But this method is still very slow considering that you will only be able to sort documents by file name or type etc. It makes far more sense to the able to classify documents first and then upload them with metadata.

After residing myself to the fact that there wasn't any simple way to accomplish this, I re-jigged my search terms and came across what looks like a very nifty utility. It's called the Document Import Kit for SharePoint 2007 (DocKIT) 1.1 and it claims that it can import documents with a separate CSV file which applies metadata when uploading multiple files. It costs $799 and there's also a free trial. I personally haven't tried it yet, but plan to once I get my dodgy MOSS development box fixed (I installed MOSS 2007 alongside WSS 2.0 on Windows SBS Small Business Server 2003 which seemed to work initially, though now I'm finding several problems I figure I'll only overcome by building my environment correctly!!).

Would appreciate any feedback from other SharePoint aficionados on how well this product works if you get to it before me.