This blog post is actually for two problems with SharePoint I’ve come across.
ISSUE #1
It was requested of me to figure out how to prepopulate the email address in SharePoint login prompts. When you login to SharePoint, if you want to do anything like open a document, you are prompted for your AD (Active Directory) credentials again and again. Needless to say, this is unnecessary and annoying.
FIX #1
After many hours of googling “prepopulate email address in SharePoint”, I actually found the fix in the SharePoint book. It’s called Enabling Automatic Login. The steps are as followed:
On the CLIENT’S computer (aka not the server… aka everyone who uses SharePoint… their actual computer) in IE (make sure it’s Internet Explorer since SharePoint really only works with IE), go to:
Tools –> Internet Options –> click on the Security tab –> select Local Internet –> then click Sites –> Advanced
Under Advanced, the URL of this website should be in the first form field. Click Add. Then Close, then Ok and Ok again.
That should fix the prompting annoyance.
ISSUE #2
When in SharePoint, you click anything (and I mean ANYTHING), there is an annoying beep. It’s like on every link, on every page, everywhere. I don’t have speakers but I have headphones hooked into my computer. Needless to say, I heard the beep with my headphones off, it was that loud. It’s annoying.
FIX #2
This fix is for the client’s computer as well… not the server… not an actual setting in SharePoint (at least none that I could find). So… on the clients computer go to:
Control Panel –>Â Sounds and Audio Devices –>Â click on the Sounds tab –>Â under Program Events scroll down to Windows Explorer –> Information Bar –> under Sounds select (None).
It was driving me crazy!
SPECIAL COMMENT
If the simple fact that you MUST use IE with SharePoint wasn’t enough, there aren’t settings in Central Administration nor on the server that solve minor annoyances like this. Microsoft should have thought about these things before they released this hunk of garbage that is SharePoint. I sincerely hope others realize that Microsoft is just a thug corporation who thinks it owns the world.
They don’t comply with standards, they don’t debug, and they don’t test their products. We are do their tests for them!
About a year ago I ran into a Microsoft error… Emails were not sending which had both .txt and .vcs files attached to them. (In case you don’t know .vcs files are for Outlook calendars.) No errors, just the emails weren’t sending. What was also weird is that some emails actually WERE getting through… and they all did before. It worked before but all of a sudden stopped working. No server changes, no MS Exchange changes.
I ended up calling Microsoft. They sent me a test program which emailed me a .txt and .vcs file. It wouldn’t work. It turns out the problem was on their end.
In the end, the dude wouldn’t stop bugging me on getting me to help him fix it. I was like “isn’t it your problem now”? They did refund me the ticket since it was their fault.
I think it’s a little ridiculous that these problems are easily fixed on the CLIENT’S side. There should be settings in Central Admin or on the actual site that take care of simple things like this so I don’t need to send out an email or post on how to fix it. The fact that every computer you use that has SharePoint, you must configure IE so those little prompts and sounds don’t drive you up the wall is unbelievable.
We don’t want to be prompted on every link or hear that annoying “blimp” every click. Use some common sense, Microsoft. Good night and good luck.