When SharePoint is used for public facing websites, there are a lot of files and locations that should not be crawled by Search Engines. Most Search Engines respect the rules defined in a special file called robots.txt to identify areas that should not be crawled. The Search Engines expect to find a robots.txt file at the root of the site, e.g. https://blog.eardley.org.uk/robots.txt When a robots.txt file is defined for SharePoint there are several locations that should be excluded as they implicitly require authentication to be accessed.

SharePoint depends on databases for everything: without a healthy SQL Server installation, SharePoint will not work at all. As part of it’s dependence on SQL Server, SharePoint creates multiple databases when it is installed and when new service applications are created, more databases are created and finally, SharePoint Administrator’s can create new databases to store content in. The characteristics of these databases vary quite dramatically, based on many different criteria including the following:

SQL Server has many configuration settings to allow it to be tailored and optimised for specific applications that depend on the databases being hosted. SharePoint is no different to many other applications in that it has particular configuration settings that are recommended, and in some cases, mandatory. SQL Server Installation Dedicated Server In testing and production SharePoint environments the SQL Server database engine should reside on a server that does not have SharePoint installed.

When designing a new SharePoint farm there are some decisions that are easy to make and for which there are useful examples such as the number of SharePoint servers that will be required and the distribution of the SharePoint Service applications. It is considerably harder in all circumstances to make design decisions when the expected usage of a SharePoint farm cannot be quantified in advance. In this scenario, experience dictates the decisions that are made, but what do you do if experience is not enough, if the service is directly dependent on the amount of content and the amount of usage?

Due to the different types of fields used in list items there are several different techniques that can be used: SP.ListItem.get\_contentType() - Retrieves the name of the content type of a list item SP.ListItem.get\_displayName() – Retrieves the display name of a list item SP.ListItem.get\_id() - Retrieves the id of a list item SP.ListItem.get\_item(‘{InternalFieldName}’) – Retrieve the value SP.ListItem.get\_item(‘{InternalFieldName}’).get_url() – Retrieve an associated url value if the field type is hyperlink

Microsoft in their wisdom have chosen to name two products in a very similar way, In fact they are so similar that they are commonly mistaken for each other. So what are they? They are both combinations of storage and synchronisation tools: both provide an area where content can be stored and both provide a way of synchronising the content to a computer to allow access to the content via Windows Explorer.

Recently I started seeing the following message popping up every time I saved a Word document: I hadn’t changed anything that I thought would start prompting me in this way, but I am using Office from an Office 365 subscription so I figured that Microsoft may have changed something. After a bit of digging I found that an add-in had appeared to allow a document to be sent via Bluetooth:

It is a common practice to perform calculations in Excel, and then to copy the calculations into Word. A drawback to this approach is the double entry (and double update) of values. There is another option: Word formulas. I have created a simple table in Word 2013 with 4 columns and 5 rows and put some information in: It doesn’t look like much and doesn’t have any totals, so first off, I am going to make it look a little better:

I was recently asked by a client for a way to find out what features are activated as site and site collection level. The following PowerShell is the easiest way I know: if ((Get-PSSnapin -Name "microsoft.sharepoint.powershell" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null ) { Write-Host "Adding SharePoint Snap-in" -ForegroundColor Cyan; Add-PSSnapin microsoft.sharepoint.powershell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue; } else { Write-Host "SharePoint Snap-in already loaded" -ForegroundColor Green; } ################################################## Write-Host "Get all features in the farm sorted by DisplayName" -ForegroundColor Cyan; ################################################## Get-SPFeature | Sort DisplayName; ################################################## Write-Host "Get a site collection and then all the features in the site collection" -ForegroundColor Cyan; ################################################## Write-Host "List all site collections" -ForegroundColor DarkCyan; Get-SPSite; Write-Host "Get a specific site collection and show the features" -ForegroundColor DarkCyan; $siteCollection = Get-SPSite | where { $\_.

I use Excel a lot, always have done and probably always will do. I find it a great tool for estimating, quick planning and most of all quick analysis. Over the years I have learnt a few tips and tricks that have sped up the way I use of Excel. Often, I come across others who do not know these tips and tricks. They may not work for everyone in every scenario but hopefully they will help some people some of the time.