SharePoint 2010: Missing View Dropdown

 

SharePoint 2010 has mixed three features into the title area of a page, the Site Title, the crumb trail and for lists and libraries, a View selection dropdown.

Here’s an example:

 

Now you want to add a custom message to a view page…

 

In 2007 we have two choices to add custom text to a view page (a web part page). One is to fire up SharePoint Designer, edit the page and then save it. This process produced a customized page (unghosted page to use the 2003 term). The other approach is to add a Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) to the page.

There are several reasons to use the CEWP: it does not unghost the page, it’s not a “customization” that might annoy our management or the next site owner, and it’s… well… just quick and easy.

 

So what’s the problem?

 

Adding a web part to a View page breaks the View selector in the crumb trail. Here’s view page with an added CEWP.  We have now lost the View selector!

 

But why? The did give us Edit Page and Add a Web Part! No warnings anywhere!

 

 

I’ve been told that this is a feature, not a bug. It was done on purpose to show that this is no longer a View, but a custom application page.

 

So what works?

 

A SharePoint Designer customization. That’s right! Edit and unghost the page and you get your customization and also get to key the View selector. So here’s the page as customized in SharePoint Designer:

 

So which approach you recommend to your typical Site Owner?

 

Go figure…

 

 

To see one way I’ve dealt with this see: http://techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com/2010/07/sharepoint-2010-replacing-crumb-trail.html

 

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