SharePoint list or site templates too large for import / export... use STSADM

I love MOSS! But there are some workarounds that you always need to look into if you want your portal to be happy!

Imagine you spent hours on customizing a site that you want to reuse as a template to create new sites. But you hit a dead-end.

Issue 1:
The maximum DEFAULT size permitted by SharePoint for a list or site to be saved as a template is 10MB. Even though I have received the message unexpectedly on sites as small as 5MB or 6MB.

Anyways the fix for this is to increase the maximum permitted property "max-template-document-size" using STSADM. See command below:

stsadm -o setproperty -propertyname max-template-document-size -propertyvalue 50000000
[Ref: http://blogs.provoke.co.nz/Ari/archive/2007/05/24/increasing-the-maximum-size-of-list-templates.aspx]

You should now be able to export your site template and save it to a local drive on your MOSS box.

Issue 2:
Now it's time to use the newly exported site template just incase you need to create a root site collection (you will need to add it to the available Site Collection templates). Simply use the STSADM command below:

stsadm –o addtemplate –filename c:\exercise.stp –title exercise
[Ref: http://mindsharpblogs.com/kathy/archive/2007/04/10/1685.aspx]

Cheers!

Displaying attachment link in a SharePoint custom list form - "DispForm.aspx" modified

A recent experience of mine while working with SharePoint lists where we required to customize the out-of-the-box list item display form "DispForm.aspx" to present a design-frenzy item view format.

During the modification process, we never assumed that the list item attachments would abruptly dissapear from the display form. All we were looking to do was to display the list item in a good looking format by modifying the XSLT, but the attachments were gone!

Lesson Learnt: Never modify the out-of-the-box list item display form "DispForm.aspx". Create a new one if you need to and call it "DispForm_WhateverYouCallIt.aspx"

Now the attachments that were gone seemed quite easy to be brought back on the page. It needed a SharePoint control AttachmentsField that went missing from the picture. Below is the code that you need to add into the XSLT template dvt_1.rowview (into your custom form) that constructs theDataFormWebPart that SharePoint Designer creates for you when you insert a Custom List Form:

Was that easy? The attachments are now showing in the custom form that you just created. Happy Coding!