Thursday 20 August 2009

SBS 2008 – Companyweb Shared Documents Content and Buttons Missing?

A user in Explorer View managed to twist things up a bit, at least we are inclined to believe that since it was the user that called indicating that things had disappeared after they deleted something.

Shared Documents on this Companyweb site is huge. They use it for everything, so not a few hearts were momentarily stalled when the following was seen:

image

Note the absence of pretty much any folders, documents, or control buttons!

When we opened the Fax Center on a workstation while logged in as the domain admin, we could open Explorer View there and navigate our way back to Shared Documents. In Explorer View we were able to see the folders and content therein, so we knew that at least the content was there. This was good because the Recycle Bins were relatively empty.

We ended up needing to do the following to get our content listed again:

  1. Log onto a workstation as domain admin.
  2. Open Companyweb.
  3. Navigate to Shared Documents.
  4. Click Site Actions.
  5. Click Edit Page.
  6. Click Add a Web Part.
  7. Check the Shared Documents library.
  8. Click the Add button.

Now, once we have our content listed again, the toolbar may or may not show the New, Upload, Actions, and Settings buttons along with the View drop down.

If the toolbar is seemingly empty, then we need to click the edit drop down to the right of Shared Documents:

image

Click on the Modify Shared Web Part link.

Change the Toolbar Type to Full Toolbar:

image

Once the above steps have been completed, the seemingly once gone document library will be back as it was and there will be some real happiness going on in Userland! :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

3 comments:

Seanpt said...

Phil,

I ran into this exact same issue a few months ago. I mean, almost verbatim. "I deleted something..."

When I first heard that I wasn't too worried with the new Recycle Bin plus we have regular backups. But when the recycle bin was empty I was a bit confused. I was really confused when I could see everything via WebDAV.

I ended up moving everything out, creating a new library, and moving everything back in (well, after trying to copy the views over from a temp library and that didn't go over well at all). I used this as an excuse to do a better job on permissions and segmenting out the data.

We also locked up modifications pretty tight after that.

I just wish I knew what both of these people "deleted."

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

Sean,

I have no clue what was taken out. I compared the "damaged" site to a known good site and things, at least directory wise, looked relatively the same.

We will have to see if it happens again.

Philip

Sandy said...

Phil,

Awesome, thanks for saving my bacon and making me look like a pro.

I'll be a subscriber from now on!