Any Sharepoint users?

Howell

Storage? I am Storage!
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I have what will probably turn out to be an easy problem but my GoogleFu is failing me. Any users (before I write up a long description)?
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I know a little about Sharepoint 2 and 3, but mostly I have learned that the proper answer is "don't use Sharepoint", which probably isn't very helpful.
 

Howell

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Ok cool. It's a SP 2 installation. The basic problem is that I'm getting different behavior between the terminal servers I'm migrating to and from.

Working:
server 2003
IE 8
Office 2010

Not working:
S2k8R2
IE 9
Office 2010

I can create two brand-new incredibly simple Office documents, one saved as .xlsx and the other saved as .xls. On the old server I can open, edit and save both files with no trouble at all. On the new server, the .xls opens fine and I can make changes and save back to the server. But the .xlsx gives me options to open or save and warns me on opening that "The file won't be saved automatically." In order to get my newly edited document back into SP I have to save locally and upload. It is working fine for other people.

I am at a loss to explain the behavior but I think the version of office installed might not be important because the first indication of a problem happens before Office is even called.

FYI, I can cause the browser to give me the same unwanted dialog box for the .xls if I add the SP server to IEs 'Trusted Sites". If I change the security setting to Medium-low, desired behavior is restored.

Thanks for the help.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Which version(s) of Sharepoint are we talking about?

I can probably set something up to test with. I don't have Sharepoint installed on any 2008 servers, but that doesn't mean I couldn't.
 

Howell

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OK.
Add/remove programs tells me the following programs are installed on the Server 2003 SharePoint host:

MS Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003
MS Office Standard Ed 2003
MS Windows SharePoint Services 2.0

Just to be clear, I was talking earlier about 2003/2008 terminal servers as clients. And it just occured to me to try from my laptop. Windows 7, IE8 works fine.

I realize that indications would seem to point to IE except that it works fine for my co-workers; one of whom did not need to make any changes to his browser. It driving me crazy!
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I'll try to build something and test it this week.
Have you looked at your IE add-ons at all or tried working in IE's safe mode?
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Documents, once put in Sharepoint, are difficult to get out. Once you start working in a Sharepoint framework, it's very hard to turn around and stop using it. Which means that you'll forever thereafter need someone to administer it and the servers it runs on. It also has it's own underlying database infrastructure that's totally different from everything else in the Microsoft universe, and it relies on a number of other related technologies that all have to be functioning perfectly in order to have Sharepoint in the first place.

All of that adds up to suck.
 

Chewy509

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IIRC, many moons ago at a TechEd conference, that ultimately MS wants items to move from Exchange (such as shared calendaring and contacts) over to SharePoint, so Exchange becomes a pure MTA and email storage host. All the other nice things that come with Exchange like shared/public folders, shared calendars and contacts will all be moved to Sharepoint. So I guess it's a technology that pure-MS houses will have to learn...

The last company I worked with (before starting Uni) had moved a lot on document infrastructure to SharePoint, and in the beginning it was a nightmare, especially how poor the searching for documents was, and the lack (or just the poor implementation) of security controls. IIRC, they had to add a 3rd party search tool before searches actually started to work better/properly (at least what one would expect from Google's level of capability).

Even integration between AD, clients and Office was a step backward, however about the only good point was that it created a central document and forum repository for a company spread across 6 offices across Australia that was easy enough to search... (in theory).

PS. That was at TechEd 2009...
 

Santilli

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Kind of funny, in a way. My ex=roommate, when he was working at PG&E was trying to use SQL server, as it changed versions, and Sharepoint to organize PG&E's massive pipeline database.

I guess he made poor decisions on software for the task.
 

Handruin

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Kind of funny, in a way. My ex=roommate, when he was working at PG&E was trying to use SQL server, as it changed versions, and Sharepoint to organize PG&E's massive pipeline database.

I guess he made poor decisions on software for the task.

It's possible, or it's also possible he didn't configure or spec it correctly. SQL Server in and by itself offers a lot of switches/parameters and complex configurations...add on top of it Sharepoint and you really need to spend some time making sure it's both the right tool for the job, and also that the configuration and hardware spec is appropriate to complete the task. It's never just one thing that makes or breaks it...you really need to look at all aspects of the config.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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OK, going with just the plainest of plain vanilla configurations I have in separate VMs a 32-bit SBS2003 system with SBS 2.0 and Office 2010 running on it and as far as I can tell it's fine if I connect to it through RDP and make blank documents and stuff.

I have Server 2008 R2 with Office 2010 in a different VM but I need to know which version of Sharepoint now.
 

Howell

Storage? I am Storage!
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Wow sorry its taken so long Merc, its been crazy. We seem to be miscommunicating.

The Sharepoint server is on Server 2003 and the document libraries are accessed through a web browser from several terminal servers. A Server 2003 terminal server is working fine while a Server 2008 terminal server gives me fits.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Ah. OK. So if I'm accessing Sharepoint on SBS2003 via a Server 2008 machine, that's a reasonable test of functionality? Because that works fine for me.

I don't have any actual Terminal Server licenses, but I can still RDP.
 
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