How to fix: "List does not Exist" error

Stepping into the SharePoint world, I pretty early understood few of the famous SharePoint errors and one of them is this.

"List Does not Exist.
The page you selected contains a list that does not exist. It may have been deleted by another user."

There are plenty of solution offerings when you search this issue online, but one that worked for me was that the user did not have access to the form template library at http://<url>/FormServerTemplates

"Go to the above URL > Settings > Library Settings > Permission to this Library" and provide permission to your user.

It all works!

PS: The error message might sometimes be deceiving, don't be deceived. Mostly, it has nothing to do with a deleted list. It was just an access issue. Stay focused! :)

In less than 140 characters

This post contains many SharePoint Tidbits.

MOSS 2007 - Save Site as Template missing?

Append your site / sub site's URL with /_layouts/savetmpl.aspx

For example - Replace http://moss:101/default.aspx with http://moss:101/_layouts/savetmpl.aspx

Why are InfoPath rules not triggering?

Customizing InfoPath at one of my client bought me to a challenge. Now, though challenge sounds a biggie, it wasn't really the case. In a moment, you'll know why!

I wanted to populate few text fields on the selection of a Dropdown list. I created a web service and connected it to InfoPath via InfoPath data connections. This would fetch data based on the dropdown selection and populate the fields.

But it wasn't the case. The fields weren't being populated!

I published and checked the web service separately and it was returning perfect as expected. I repeatedly checked the InfoPath form rules and they were fine too.

Now, if you are new to InfoPath customization (like I am), you should be convinced that you are missing something somewhere.

Looking around I navigated to the Dropdown list properties > Browser Forms > Postback Settings. This was set to Never. I changed it to On Demand and .......

Ah ha!

Biggie? I told you, you'll know why not :)

Don't see Save as Site Template

I wanted to migrate my site from one SharePoint Site Collection to another. And I thought to save the site as a template and upload the template to the new Site Collection and Activate it. But when I navigated to the Site Settings page of the site I wanted to save as template, I din't find the link.
Under Site Actions

This post is limited to making Save as site template available here and not how to Export and Import the template.

Steps to enable Save as site template

• Click on Manage Site features under Site Actions.
• Click Deactivate on SharePoint Server Publishing feature.
• Click Deactivate this feature on the page that opens.
• Navigate back to Site Settings page for that site and under Site Actions you will now see Save as site template.

Picture speaks a thousand words: I should have done this before the write up :)

Excel VBA script to open a file system folder

Issue Resolution Journey during SharePoint 2010 Installation on Windows 7

While Installing SharePoint Foundation 2010, I encountered a failed installation error and it pointed me out to go through the log files.

While having a look at the log files, I landed on a file at this location C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\Summary.txt

When I scrolled towards the end of the file, the below InnerException was displayed.

Inner exception type: Microsoft.SqlServer.Configuration.SqlEngine.ValidationException
        Message: 
                The system database file master.mdf already exists in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\Data\MSSQL10.SHAREPOINT\MSSQL\DATA.

Towards resolving the issue, I renamed this file -> un-installed SharePoint Foundation 2010 and tried installing again. This time I hit another error quite similar to the above but with one exception, "the file name this time was master.ldf"

Inner exception type: Microsoft.SqlServer.Configuration.SqlEngine.ValidationException
        Message: 
                The system database file master.ldf already exists in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\Data\MSSQL10.SHAREPOINT\MSSQL\DATA.

By this I understood that it would do this for all the other system databases available in this folder.

I went one folder up to ..\MSSQL and renamed the folder DATA -> un-installed SharePoint Foundation 2010 and re-installed again. Guess what ....... I was in smiles.

SharePoint created another folder called DATA and created the database and log files a-fresh again.

Quite straight forward, but worth taking a space on my blog. Hope it helps!!

Excel VB commands to Convert Numbers into Currency

In the below example we are converting a Number to Currency and we are using '$' symbol for display.


We can achieve this using alternate commands like the ones in the below example. However, the above command is a short-hand. Quite handy, ain't it?

Output after converting to INR

We can also change the currency. Suppose we were to display INR (Indian Rupees)




To learn about formatting numbers in Office Excel (the ones like #.##, #,###.00 etc. that you see in the above examples), I would recommend you to refer Excel Help and search for the topic "Create or delete a custom number format"