Comments on: Exposing Excel contents to make reporting easy in SharePoint

By: JoeW

JoeW — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:32:07 +0000

Much heartache and wasted time for many people fighting with DIP and WSS functionality (or lack thereof.) My comments are specific to Excel 2007 and WSS 3.0, so proceed accordingly.

The issue seems to be achieving some sort of synchronization between content types (with their associated site columns) and DIP s that appear to be auto-generated when Excel documents are uploaded to document libraries that have content types defined along with a custom template. We ran into this problem when we started adding and deleting site columns from our custom Content Types. The DIP just seemed to ignore these changes, no matter what we did. This is where the profound differences between Office Integration (Create New Document) and WSS Content Management (Upload an existing document) showed up.

Once you have followed the steps listed in this article, add the VBA code referred to in Markus' comment – but you still aren't out of the woods yet. You must add sample data to your “template” that will populate the ContentTypeProperties you wish to push up to WSS, then upload this document into your document library. Opening the uploaded document from the library and looking at the DIP, you will find all of your custom server-based properties where they should be. Clear out the sample data and save your template back to WSS. Then update the Content Type definition to point at the new template that will be called when someone chooses “New” from the document library menu bar.

We spent a lot of frustrating hours trying to coax the DIP into showing our revised content columns, even resorting to InfoPath edits and publishing forms – none of it worked until we followed this process. I suspect that much of this has to do with the incomplete support for DIPs in WSS, versus the explicit support in MOSS. One more gotcha for those of us who figured that WSS was “good enough” that we could save the bucks on MOSS…

By: Markus

Markus — Mon, 31 May 2010 23:34:55 +0000

Like most people here I wasn't able to send custom properties in the Excel document into server properties (user defined columns in a SharePoint 2010 list) when using the “New Document” button in the document library.

The solution is to use a small VBA code, which reads the cell-values and puts them into the server properties.

The solution can be found here…
http://markiwaszko.blogspot.com/2009/02/binding...

… and here …
http://amatterofdegree.typepad.com/a_matter_of_...

I had to use a xltm-file as template to make the code work when the document is generated out of SharePoint.

By: niallramsey

niallramsey — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:47:26 +0000

This isn't working for me either. I'm using Excel 2007 but using the Microsoft's Online Services (BPOS) for SharePoint … Not sure if this makes a difference?

Would love to get this issue handled because we input quite a bit of Metadata into our documents, and then to be not able to filter/search/sort on that in SharePoint without re-typing it all is very frustrating !

By: Name

Name — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:24:57 +0000

I have followed the steps exactly as they are posted, but when I create a new document from the library I have notice it's not pulling any of my properties data into the library. When I select advanced properties I think notice that my cells are no longer linked. For some reason it's as if the properties that i customized aren't sticking.

By: Jimmie

Jimmie — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:52:03 +0000

Ok, i created my own Form and the document library with a few fields for my company. I am able to get this method to work only when i upload a document from my computer. I tried going in and modifying the existing template as well as your method of going into the forms folder itself and changing the template file with my file that worked for the upload. This is a great option, but if it does not work by using the New Button then it is not very useful. Has anyone else had this problem?

By: Matt Warburton

Matt Warburton — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:31:39 +0000

I’m having this annoying issue as well. I can’t find anything on google about it! Does anyone have an update. I’ved ended up using manditory fields, the one thing I didn’t want to do.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 18:39:01 +0000

I am having the same issue. I see the Server Properties and the standard Document Properties, but when a user selects “New” from within the doc library, and completed the form, the values in the named cells do not promote to the server properties.

Has anyone found a solution for this? Shouldn’t this be a LOT easier (Microsoft)?

By: Andrei

Andrei — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:16:00 +0000

Yup, that was pretty much the idea, I know: getting them to update/populate automatically. I think you can also achieve that functionality in a programatical way, but that is beside the point as well

I think the key to the problem is the appearance of the second set of properties, server side. I will dig more into it and if a find a clear result I will let you know as well.

By: Andrew Woodward

Andrew Woodward — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:22:00 +0000

Andrei,

I have not tried this but I can see how this could help, although it would require the users to manually set the values – something I was trying to avoid in this scenario.

By: Andrei

Andrei — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:34:00 +0000

Hello. I’m experincing the same problem with custom properties for Excel documents. Have you considered using a workaround to obtain the same functionality: ie using Content Types or Custom Document Information Panels, and if so, to what result?