Saji Viswam's Blog

Incorrect search result title for PDF documents in SharePoint 2010 search

Saji Viswambharan — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:53:11 +0000

Recently we ran into an issue similar to what described in this post but with PDF documents. The SharePoint metadata “Title” is empty for these documents but the search results show some random text (which does not even present in the document) instead of document name. We have already implemented the fix for Word 2007 title issue described in the above mentioned post. On further investigating, it’s found that this behavior is due to the document’s internal property “Title” (not the document library metadata column “Title”). This title is set while generating the PDF files from a PDF creator/editor software. If SharePoint metadata “Title” is empty for the document, SharePoint crawler will consider the document’s internal property “Title” for the search result title. This can be verified by downloading the documents having incorrect title in search results and navigating to File > Properties after opening it in Adobe Reader. You can find the “Title” property is set to the text which is displayed in search results as title. So, I guess, the crawler considers text for search result title in the order of SharePoint metadata “Title”, document specific property “Title” and then file name if the first two are empty. I haven’t found a fix or workaround to change this order. The best option would be encouraging users to make good use of SharePoint metadata while sharing/collaborating on documents. Populating the SharePoint metadata associated with documents (especially “title”) will improve visibility of these documents in search.

Hibernate Option Missing in Windows 7 Start Menu

Saji Viswambharan — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:30:20 +0000

This could be because “Allow hybrid sleep” option is set to true. In order to change the setting,

Open Power Options UI (Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options)
Click on “Change plan settings” link against preferred power plan
Click on Change advanced power settings link in “Edit Plan Settings” screen
Expand the item “Sleep” and then sub item “Allow hybrid sleep”
If the Setting is “On” then click on it and change to “Off”

Once this option is set, you can see “Hibernate” option is back in the start menu.

Programmatically Accessing SharePoint List XML Data in C# Code

Saji Viswambharan — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:10:32 +0000

SharePoint list data can be accessed in custom applications in C# without using SharePoint Object Model or Web Services. The list data can be retrieved as XML using a specific URL to the list (even using a web browser). This is described in this post. This URL can be requested from within the custom code to get the XML. The problem while creating an XMLReader object using the above URL is, it cannot authenticate the user (or application pool identity) into the SharePoint site unless anonymous authentication is enabled in the SharePoint site (which is false in most of the SharePoint implementations). A work around for this problem is to use HTTPWebRequest object to make a request to the list URL and to parse the response stream. Following is an example which takes app pool identity to authenticated into SharePoint site and to get the list data as XML.


String myURL = "/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List={List GUID}&XMLDATA=TRUE";
HttpWebRequest myRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(myURL);
myRequest.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
HttpWebResponse myResponse = (HttpWebResponse)myRequest.GetResponse();
Encoding enc = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding(0);
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(myResponse.GetResponseStream(), enc);
string result = reader.ReadToEnd();

The string “result” can be used to create an XML document.

If you are unable to use custom app pools for your web application (older versions of IIS) you can create a NetworkCredentail object to specify custom credentials. In order to do that, replace the line


myRequest.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

with the following block.


CredentialCache credCache = new CredentialCache();
credCache.Add(new Uri(myURL), "NTLM", new NetworkCredential("", "", ""));
myRequest.Credentials = credCache;

SharePoint List Data as XML

Saji Viswambharan — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:49:55 +0000

Getting data as XML from a SharePoint List or Library is very helpful when we need to use the data in a custom application (developed using a programming language like C#) or in InfoPath forms. The data from a SharePoint list can be retrieved in XML format by using the following URL:

/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List={}&XMLDATA=TRUE

You can mention different parameters like “Query”, “FilterField” etc. for specifying columns to be retrieved and for filtering the quantity of data being retrieved. An example for these parameter options is below:

/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List={}&&XMLDATA=TRUE&Query=&FilterField1=&FilterValue1=

The FilterFiled and FilterValue in pairs like FilterField1=<>&FilterValue1=<> and FilterField2=<>&FilterValue2=<> and such.

“System.InvalidProgramException: Common Language Runtime detected an invalid program” while rendering Data View Web Parts

Saji Viswambharan — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:49:13 +0000

On a busy Tuesday, users of our SharePoint 2010 farm started receiving the following error on a web part page.

Unable to display this Web Part. To troubleshoot the problem, open this Web page in a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation-compatible HTML editor such as Microsoft SharePoint Designer. If the problem persists, contact your Web server administrator.

The web part page was Post.aspx page in a Blog site. We’ve modified XSLT of the web part displaying the post (title and body) in order to change the default blog picture (date view calendar) to poster’s profile picture.

The error message from ULS log was,

Error while executing web part: System.InvalidProgramException: Common Language Runtime detected an invalid program.
at Execute(XmlQueryRuntime )
at System.Xml.Xsl.XmlILCommand.Execute(Object defaultDocument, XmlResolver dataSources, XsltArgumentList argumentList, XmlWriter writer, Boolean closeWriter)
at System.Xml.Xsl.XmlILCommand.Execute(IXPathNavigable contextDocument, XmlResolver dataSources, XsltArgumentList argumentList, XmlWriter results)
at System.Xml.Xsl.XslCompiledTransform.Transform(IXPathNavigable input, XsltArgumentList arguments, XmlWriter results)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.DataFormWebPart.ExecuteTransform(XslCompiledTransform xslCompiledTransform, XsltArgumentList xmlArguments, Boolean bDeferExecuteTransform)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.DataFormWebPart.PrepareAndPerformTransform(Boolean bDeferExecuteTransform)

It looks like a random issue with SharePoint 2010 List View/Data View web parts whose XSLT has been customized. Restarting IIS on the web front end server resolved the issue. Hope Microsoft’s fixed the issue in SP1.

“The Web application at could not be found” – Error with Visual Studio Custom Applications which uses SharePoint 2010 Object Model

Saji Viswambharan — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:58:10 +0000

Most of us might have seen this error while creating a custom application (console application, Windows application or custom web part) using Visual Studio targeting for SharePoint 2010. It’s not just this specific error but a lot of other weird error messages without any reason. The above error occurs when we create a new SPSite object using a site URL with following code.

SPSite site = New SPSite ();

When we check the web application and site mentioned in it exists and can be browsed in browser! Looks like there is no reason for Visual Studio to show this error. But stop yelling at Visual Studio; there is a reason. You haven’t selected the right CPU version for the target application (x64 v/s x86). The reason behind this is, SharePoint 2010 works only on a 64-bit platform but Visual Studio is a 32-bit application. When we open a project in Visual Studio, the default target platform selected is 32-bit. When you compile your custom application, it creates binaries for 32-bit platform which doesn’t work on a 64-bit platform as the way it is expected to be.

So how can we avoid this error? Just change the target platform to x64 in Project Properties > Build section. It’s also recommended to create reference to corresponding assemblies. For example,

$(Windir)\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\system.data.dll

$(Windir)\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\mscorlib.dll

Add Only Permission Level in SharePoint 2010

Saji Viswambharan — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 22:47:23 +0000

Have you ever had a requirement from your farm users that they need a custom permission level which allows the users/groups to add or submit documents or InfoPath forms into a library but not view or edit them? If you try to create this permission level using SharePoint GUI (Site Permissions > Permission Levels > Add a Permission Level), you will notice that whenever you check the permission “Add Items”, the permission “View Items” will also be checked. There is no way you can check “Add Items” permission alone. But don’t worry, as always, PowerShell is at your help. You can create an add only permission level using the following PowerShell script.


$spweb=Get-SPWeb -Identity "";
$spRoleDefinition = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPRoleDefinition;
$spRoleDefinition.Name = "Submit only";
$spRoleDefinition.Description = "Can submit/add forms/files/items into library or list but cannot view/edit them.";
$spRoleDefinition.BasePermissions = "AddListItems, ViewPages, ViewFormPages";
$spweb.RoleDefinitions.Add($spRoleDefinition);
$spweb.Dispose();

Paste the above script into a text editor and save it into the server with .ps1 extension. From the PowerShell console, execute the ps1 file. You will have the new permission level created in the site collection at .

Are List Attachments Indexed in SharePoint Search?

Saji Viswambharan — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:55:29 +0000

Recently one of my colleagues brought into my attention that list attachments were not getting indexed and hence not showing in search results. We did some research and tests together and it is found that attachments are actually getting indexed and can be searched! I’ve seen a lot of people asking the same question in various blogs. I guess the confusion arouse because of the way SharePoint shows the search result for attachment. In the search results, SharePoint doesn’t really provide a direct link to the attachment. Instead, it displays link to the list item containing the attachment. But in the description of the search result, you can see the words from the attachment that you searched for. This is a bit disappointing because the search result would be confusing and useless if the list item has multiple attachments. The user won’t know which attachment contains the words he searched for.

Delay in Updating SharePoint RSS Feeds in Outlook 2010

Saji Viswambharan — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 22:51:16 +0000

Most of time users may complain about RSS feed not getting updated in timely manner from SharePoint lists and libraries even though they have set the Send/Receive interval to shorter duration. This is because, in a SharePoint site, there is a minimum default time of one hour is set which RSS feed reader applications can request for update from RSS feeds in that site. This default minimum time can be changed by the site owner by performing following steps.

Navigate to Site Settings > RSS (under Site Administration)
Change “Time to Live (minutes)” to desired duration. Default is 60 minutes.

If you cannot change this property due to some reason (like organizational policy), you can instruct the complaining users to perform the following steps in Outlook to override this “publisher enforced delay”.

In MS Outlook 2010, open Outlook Account Settings by clicking File tab > Account Settings > Account Settings…
In the Account Settings screen, select RSS Feeds tab, select desired RSS feed from the list and click Change…
In the RSS Feed Options screen, UNCHECK the Update Limit check box and click OK.
Click Close on Account Settings screen

Now the RSS feeds will be synced according to the Send and Receive frequency you’ve set in Outlook. You can change the Send and Receive frequency by performing the following steps.

Open Outlook Options screen by clicking File tab > Options
In Outlook Options, select Advanced on the left hand side pane and then click on Send and Receive button on right.
In Send/Receive Groups screen select the account you want (All Accounts by default) and change the Automatic Send/Receive schedule to desired duration.

Cannot Delete Site Columns from Document Library or Content Type

Saji Viswambharan — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 20:16:00 +0000

Recently I ran into an issue where one of the SharePoint users added an existing site column called “Active” into one of the document libraries and was not able to remove it. This is a strange behavior from SharePoint and is because some “AllowDeletion” field property is set to true by default. Anyway, I was able to delete the filed using the following PowerShell script.

$web = Get-SPWeb https://siteurl/
$list = $web.Lists["Shared Documents"]
$field = $list.Fields["Active"]
$field.AllowDeletion = “true”
$field.Sealed = “false”
$field.Delete()
$list.Update()
$web.Dispose()

In this case, the column was added only to the Document Library; not to the site content type. If these types of columns were added to site content types, you could use the following script.

$web = Get-SPWeb http://siteurl/
$ct = $web.ContentTypes["Document"]
$spFieldLink = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldLink($web.Fields["Active"])
$ct.FieldLinks.Delete($spFieldLink.Id)
$ct.Update()
$web.Dispose()

Thanks to Brendan Well’s blog which saved me a lot of time.