5 Top SharePoint Tips For Improving Your Experience

I’m one of those people your Support Team dread. Those that come full of curiosity, press all the buttons and then log the ticket later! Since my time using an AS400 system, I would always want some quick and easy ways to speed up what I’m doing. I’ve since learned some keywords like “Sandbox” and “Dev”!

From my button pushing with SharePoint and managing projects there over the years, I’ve picked out 5 of my top SharePoint tips that could help you - plus we know a lot of our BrightWork community struggle with these areas too. Some buttons that you may be wondering, “What does this do”? (Or if you’re like me, you’ll just go ahead and push it!!).

1. Add a Calendar to Outlook

• In SharePoint, open up your calendar view.

• Click “Connect to Outlook”
• Note: It may prompt for a username and password

• I can now see the calendar in Outlook

Headache Alert – If your SharePoint Calendar is on another domain, Outlook will prompt you for the username and password each time you logon!

2. Set Up Alerts

Do you need to know if someone is changing items in your lists? Set up an alert and you can be notified via email or SMS when a change has been made.

• On the Ribbon of your list, click “Alert Me” and the “Set alert on this list”
• You can set up the “if” and “when” for the alerts:

• But just be careful! Sometimes if you create too many alerts it can be confusing. People might set up a rule instead and throw them into a folder in Outlook, never to be looked at again!

3. Set Versioning and Approvals on a List

This ties into No. 2 above. It might make more sense to put some sort of versioning on your list and that way you can check to see if and when edits were made.

• On the list you want to track, click on “List” and “List Settings”

• Under “General Settings”, click on “Versioning Setting”

• If you want to set an approval on the list, click “Yes” on “Require content approval for submitted items”

• And if you want to select “Yes” on “Create a version each time you edit an item in this list?”, this will let you see when edits were made, and by whom.

4. Copy Documents to Another SharePoint Library

Do you sometimes want to copy a document from an old site into a new site that you are now working on? Rather than having to download and re-upload.

• In your documents library, click on the document you want to copy. (You can only do one at a time).
• Go to “File” on the Ribbon and select “Send To” \ “Other Location”
• You can then pick the new site that you want to send the document to. Make sure you enter in the right URL! It needs to be the folder and not the form i.e.
  • http://ift.tt/1QWgViV

• Click “Okay” on the wizard, and in a few moments, the document will be copied over to the new library

5. Open a Library in Windows Explorer

Maybe you want to do a bulk copy and paste or move file. You can open up a library within Explorer.

• In the Documents Library, click on the “Library” ribbon and select “Open with Explorer”
• After a few moments, you’ll be able to see the files in Windows Explorer. The same permissions carry over from what you had in the SharePoint site.

These are just some of the little tricks that can help you beef up your SharePoint knowledge and hopefully save you some time when doing some project work. If there are any top SharePoint tips that you find really helpful when using SharePoint, I’d love if you’d add them to the comments below!

by Ciara McDonnell via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community