Views from Veronique

Blog Being Repaired – I Broke It. Hold Please…(2023-01-31)

  • Rename Your Emails

    Did you know that you can rename the subject lines of the emails you get? You know what it’s like, most email subject lines are pretty useless, making it very hard to search for anything. To change them, open the mail, the just type over the existing subject info. Then click escape on your keyboard, […]

  • New Microsoft Lists

    Microsoft Lists have finally started arriving in sunny South Africa. They default to your My Site like OneDrive does, (SharePoint 2010 days for the industry veterans). It’s also interesting that soon as you’re in a list’s settings – you’re back in SharePoint land, it doesn’t say Microsoft Lists anymore. They are essentially souped up Custom […]

  • Considering Using Office 365 and SharePoint Online to Build Your Intranet?

    We have endless queries from companies and people just entering the Office 365 / Microsoft 365 / SharePoint Online market, so we thought we’d go back to basics, start from the beginning, and take you on the journey to the cloud. There are 2 main types of enquiries we get – people either fresh in […]

  • Make SharePoint Online Menu Items Open in New Tabs!

    What a score! I pasted a link wrong and when I fixed it, I stumbled across a way to make Quick Launch and Top Link Bar Mega Menu items open in new tabs! 😀 And it’s SO easy! Edit any menu, then click on an existing link. Select only the http:// in the front of […]

  • Letterhead and Template Management in SharePoint Online

    Ah the cloud, full of interesting “quirks”. Something as simple as not allowing people to edit documents should just work seamlessly when they have read only access. But it doesn’t work seamlessly in reality. It’s a common scenario that we need people to be able to download templates, save the completed documents somewhere else, and […]

  • How to Fix the 5000 Item Limit Error Message in Classic #SharePoint Online Lists and Libraries

    There is a hard limit on the number of items that can be displayed PER VIEW in lists and libraries. That limit is 5000 items. This means that you cannot display more than 5000 items in any view or you will get the following error : This view cannot be displayed because it exceeds the […]

  • SharePoint 2010 Workflows are Retiring on 1 November 2020

    A major update notification went out last night – are you ready? In 3 months time your workflows that have been running for years will stop. What major operational systems are using SP2010 workflows? Check today! It takes time to build / rebuild automated systems. The following is copied from the O365 Message Centre and […]

  • Latest News from a Microsoft Keynote and Office 365 Stats

    Check out the keynote from the father of SharePoint, Jeff Teper, from the Microsoft 365 Virtual Summit this week. Some quick highlights : SharePoint has grown TEN-FOLD since 2016 SharePoint usage has doubled in the past 12 months Office 365 has 258 million monthly active users Microsoft Teams has 75 million daily active users The […]

  • SharePoint Site Collection 404 Not Found Error

    SharePoint Site Collection 404 Not Found Error

    If you click on a link to a site collection and get this error : And then go to the SharePoint Admin Centre and still see it in the list, but clicking the link still give the 404 error above : Then is means that the Home Page has been deleted. To get it back, […]

  • How to Manage Your Staff Working From Home Using Office 365

    Many managers and business owners are struggling to keep a handle on what their staff are doing whilst working from home. It’s a new concept for many people. But this is where technology used in the right way, can be vital. The first trick is to keep it simple. This is no time to over-complicate […]

  • How Are You Coping With Lockdown?

    We’re 11 days into lockdown in South Africa. In our industry, we’re used to working from home and really though this would be business as usual for us. But what has happened is that we are working 10 times more than we did before! With everyone at home now, people have got more time to […]

  • Crisis Countdown Timer

    We hope you are all using SharePoint and friends to communicate the Covid-19 issues to all your staff; more on that later. For now, why not add the Countdown Timer web part to your intranet to give people something to look forward to. We decided to do it to our website too. T-Minus 1 day […]

  • Are You Emotionally Ready to Work at Home?

    Learning to work at home alone can be challenging for people who have been used to working in offices surrounded by people. Here’s a chapter adapted from my book called Career Success with SharePoint and Office 365 you may find helpful : It sounds somewhat romantic to say that you work from home—and it is, […]

  • Can Your Employees Still Work If They Are Not in the Office?

    This is a good time to evaluate how well your business operates when people can’t come to the office. Most companies have many technologies in their business to keep it running, a key technology should be your intranet. Hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world have been using SharePoint for their intranets – it’s […]

  • “There Was an Error While Attempting to Get the Theme”

    Modern SharePoint Online is buggy in some aspects. One of those being the themes. Out of nowhere, modern themes start giving errors – and waiting 24 hours doesn’t seem to solve it. To fix it, go back to the classic themes and change it to something else. This will kickstart the modern themes again. Thanks […]

  • Office 365 / Microsoft 365 Licensing Cheatsheets

    I love this tech community. People share so much knowledge without any motivation or compensation. A lovely man called Aaron Dinnage made a whole bunch of licensing cheatsheets that you can download from Github, in multiple formats. THANK YOU! They were very helpful Aaron, the licensing model is a nightmare at the best of times.

  • Do You Have Automatic Access to All Site Collections as a SharePoint Administrator?

    No. If you are given SharePoint Admin rights because you are now in charge of managing the intranet, you need to give yourself access to every site collection individually. If there are hundreds of them, rather ask the IT guys to run a PowerShell script to add you. You can give yourself access to any […]

  • How to Get the Top Navigation / Mega Menu on a Modern Site

    Someone asked me if turning a site into the communication site look and feel would give you the top navigation. The answer is no. To get the top nav on any modern site – and by association, get the mega menu options – go to the SharePoint Admin Centre and register the site as a […]

  • How to Turn Your Modern SharePoint Team Site into a Communication Site with No Code

    Want to turn your modern team site into a one-page communication site look and feel? You need to lose the Quick Launch then. Easy peasy – click on Settings > Site Information > View All Site Settings. Click on Navigation Elements. Then untick Enable Quick Launch and save. (PS : Please don’t ever use Tree […]

  • Hiding the Edit Button on Modern SharePoint Sites, About Site Pages and Edit Rights

    Permissions in the modern SharePoint / Teams cloud continue being a huge headache in most people’s lives. It’s understandable. There are 13 admin centres in Office 365, 45 administrator levels; 4 different SharePoint templates, 4 additional permission levels; 3 different Teams templates; then add Office 365 groups into the mix. It’s a huge undertaking getting […]

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