Applies to:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (SPS 2003)
Windows SharePoint Services v2 (WSS v2)

probably applies as well to ASP.NET applications with similar problem (web.config xml malformed)

Problem:
When trying to access a SharePoint site settings ( /_layouts/2070/settings.aspx (if your SharePoint is in English), or /_layouts/2070/settings.aspx (if your SharePoint is in Portuguese), etc.) and get the following error:

«An error occurred while parsing EntityName. Line 6, position 50.»

Cause:
This error was caused by a «&» char on a custom webapp's Web.config stored under the LAYOUTS/2070/LPUtilities folder:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
    <appSettings>
        <add key="LearningPortalUtilities.edsps.CSDataServiceEx" value="http://www.example.com/CsWebApp/dataservice2/service.asmx"/>
        <add key="PDApproverUsername" value="someUser"></add>
        <add key="PDApproverPassword" value="some&password"></add>
        <add key="PDApproverDomain" value="DOMAIN"></add>
        <add key="LearningPortalUtilities.edu.demo.portal.Lists" value="http://www.example.com/_vti_bin/lists.asmx" />
    </appSettings>
</configuration>

While parsing this file, when the «&» char was hit, an exception was thrown with the error message mentioned above.

Solution:
The «&» char must be substituted with a Html Entity:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
    <appSettings>
        <add key="LearningPortalUtilities.edsps.CSDataServiceEx" value="http://www.example.com/CsWebApp/dataservice2/service.asmx" />
        <add key="PDApproverUsername" value="someUser"></add>
        <add key="PDApproverPassword" value="some&amp;password"></add>
        <add key="PDApproverDomain" value="DOMAIN"></add>
        <add key="LearningPortalUtilities.edu.demo.portal.Lists" value="http://www.example.com/_vti_bin/lists.asmx" />
    </appSettings>
</configuration>

Hope this helps someone out there.

Following another idea, I sent an email to Doug in hope for the right direction to follow:

«I'm trying to store a file inside the zip file (.docx), but when I open the .docx on word 2007 I get the following error message: «the office open xml file test.docx cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents.» I want to store some files inside the .docx (zip file) for use by other applications without affecting how it is used by word 2007.»

Doug did more than that, and wrote a hole post on how to do it:

«Arbitrary content in an OPC package

Basic Concepts: Parts, Relationships, and Content Types

First, a few basic concepts. Open XML documents are packages based on the OPC (Open Packaging Convention) specification. XPS documents are also OPC packages, and you can create OPC packages of your own that have nothing to do with Open XML or XPS if you'd like. If you do that, you can use the .NET 3.0 packaging API to work with your documents, which means the same programming techniques you'll use for Open XML apply to your own custom package.

...»

Thanks Doug! You have just unleashed a demon

I was working with Marcos on setting Microsoft Office 2007 on his system when we were baffled with the following error message:

«Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s): The 2007 Microsoft Office system does not support upgrading from a prerelease version of the 2007 Microsoft Office system. You must first uninstall any prerelease versions of the 2007 Microsoft Office system products and associated technologies. Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup.»

We had already unninstalled his Beta 2TR, so, guess we were in trouble... After a few web searches we found this Microsoft tool, the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility. Downloaded this tool and used it to remove the Office (Beta) still hanging in there. Afterwards, everything installed fine.

Hope this helps someone out there

Also, don't forget to install the 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS.

Via SharePoint Team Blog,

Joel Oleson writes:

«Announcing the RTW of WSS and Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard and Enterprise Evaluation!

It is my pleasure to announce the RTW of WSS 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007.  Please read the all information on the details page. 

Note: Installing Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 over any beta or trial edition of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is not supported. 

Links to download the RTW versions:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 x86 English Evaluation 

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Here are the Product Keys you will need when installing SharePoint Server 2007

SharePoint Server Standard Trial: XJMKW-8T7PR-76XT6-RTC8G-VVWCQ
SharePoint Server Enterprise Trial: F2JBW-4PDJC-HKXTJ-YCKRP-T2J9D

...»

Go get it!!

Last month we produced a video on Paperless Meetings, also in context of an event by Microsoft Portugal called «The New World for Public Administration Work».

You can view it here.

Also, check out the unofficial making of.

Naming some of the technologies used: Tablet PC, Windows Vista, MOSS 2007, LCS 2005, Office 2007, Office Communicator, ...

Via Mart & Michiel,

«Microsoft confirms they're working on a Records Center Add-on Pack for Office SharePoint Server which will provide the additional functionality to meet the DoD 5015.2 criteria. The add-on pack will be freely available to all customers with Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Microsoft is slotted to take the DoD 5015.2 certification test on May 14, 2007 and they plan to release the add-on pack shortly after the certification process is complete.»

Via Mart,

«Finally it is there!

This Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services contains the following tools to aid developers in building SharePoint applications:
Visual Studio 2005 Project Templates

• Web Part
• Team Site Definition
• Blank Site Definition
• List Definition

Visual Studio 2005 Item Templates (items that can be added into an existing project)

• Web Part
• Custom Field
• List Definition (with optional Event Receiver)
• Content Type (with optional Event Receiver)
• Module

SharePoint Solution Generator

• This stand-alone program generates a Site Definition project from an existing SharePoint site. The program enables developers to use the browser and Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer to customize the content of their sites before creating code by using Visual Studio.

Download here»

Via Bart,

«Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Technologies - Community Technology Preview (CTP) November 2006

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies (Reporting Services Add-in) allows you to take advantage of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2) report processing and management capabilities within Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. The download provides the following functionality:

• A Report Viewer Web Part that provides report viewing capability, export to other rendering formats, page navigation, search, print, and zoom.
• Web application pages so that you can create subscriptions and schedules, and manage reports, models, and data sources.
• Support for using standard Windows SharePoint Services features including document management, collaboration, security, and deployment with report server content types.»

Also, pay special attention to:

«Warning: No automatic upgrade support
Pre-release versions of the Reporting Services Add-in cannot be upgraded to a future version. Also, it is possible that you might not be able to upgrade the report server database that you create in this release. If this occurs, you will have to republish all data files and redefine subscriptions, schedules, report history.»

Get it here

Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 search returns a portal blank page with header, title, and no results nor error message.

Updated the post on the search problem: click here.

For those of you installing Beta 2 TR, you probably run into trouble when uninstalling the WinFX 3.0 Runtime Components Beta 2... Here's a tool for that:

Brief Description

Thanks to another member from our team, Marcos Alves, for helping me find it

Hello everyone,

Since I started this blog, with Maxim Tarrasenko's help, I've been using it to share with the community how I fixed problems in hope it would be helpful to anyone else - who knows, maybe when you turn to your search engine to search for a problem you're facing, you end up on my blog finding the solution because I run to it earlier...

I'm turning to this community now in hope someone already run into the same trouble I find myself on right now

We have a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 SP2 farm, 2 web+search frontend servers, 1 index+job server, cluster sql with named instance. While searching today, it returns a portal blank page. :-(

Been trying to figure out what's wrong... none of the servers is registering any event log error or alert, index server is crawling and propagating without errors...

Have also looked into this post from Joachim Farla, but no luck: Portal search always returns blank results

In case anyone ever faced this problem, please let me know!!

Many thanks in advance

*** UPDATE [06/11/2006] ***

We've finally got it working Alexandro Cortiço opened a support incident and today the search problem was solved: this problem was caused by the SharePoint databases not being updated when Service Pack 2 was installed.

Please refer to this link for the solution: You cannot restart a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 database upgrade

 Also, to check your databases versions use the SPS Report Tool.