SharePoint 2013: Hide List and Library Column Headings

 

This is an update to an older article to include support for SharePoint 2013.

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Hiding Column Headings

I had a request to hide the column headings of a list displayed in a web part. First thought was that they wanted to hide the toolbar, but they were asking about the clickable column headings. I think they were wanting to make a page look more like a regular web page instead a page full of lists. By the way, this makes for a better way to display a view with only one column.

Note: This will of course remove the ability of the site visitor to sort and filter the web part.

Note: This will also work in the view page (view pages use web parts!), but in SharePoint 2010 and 2013 adding a web part to a view page will change how the ribbon gets displayed and will remove the View dropdown menu from the title area crumb trail.

Before:

After:

With Toolbar set to "No Toolbar":

Remove additional clutter…

You can edit the web part and then click "Edit the current view" further clean up the display of the list.

• Remove the checkbox column: In the Tabular View section uncheck "Allow individual item checkboxes".
• Remove the "…": In the Columns section uncheck "Name (linked to document with edit menu)" and checkmark "Name (linked to document)".
• Remove the hyperlink: In the Columns section uncheck "Name (linked to document with edit menu)" and checkmark "Name (for use in forms)".
• Remove any unneeded columns such as Modified or Modified By.

 

Steps:

• Add your web part for the list or library to a page.
• For a minimal look set the web part's Toolbar Type property to “No Toolbar”.
• Copy the JavaScript below to a Notepad file (name it something like “HideHeading.html”) and upload this file to a library such as Site Assets.
• In the library where you uploaded this file, click the "…" and copy the displayed URL. It should look something like this:
      https://yourServerDomain/sites/training/SiteAssets/HideColumnHeadings.html
• Below your list / library web part add a Content Editor Web Part (CEWP).
• If the CEWP displays it’s title bar then in the Appearance section set the Chrome to “none”.
• Paste the URL copied above into the Content Link box.
• In the web part properties editor, click OK.
• In the PAGE ribbon, click Save.
• Or (for SharePoint view pages)
  • Edit the view page in SharePoint Designer 2013. 
  • Copy and paste the Javascript to just before the end tag for PlaceHolderMain (just before </asp:Content>).
• If you want to hide the column headings of multiple web parts modify the IF statement like this Three web parts

Web part summary name!

In SharePoint 2007, the summary name is usually just the list’s name: “Shared Documents”.

In SharePoint 2010, the summary name is usually the list’s name PLUS the list’s description. For example the default for Shared Documents is: “Shared Documents Share a document with the team by adding it to this document library.”  (including the period)

To find the correct name use your browser’s View Source option to display the HTML of the page and search for “summary=” and copy the text that follows. Or, use the browser's developer tools (usually F12) and search for "summary="

    <table  …  summary="Shared Documents Share a document with the team by adding it to this document library."   … >

 

The JavaScript

Need to change multiple web parts? Edit the line that contains "if (x[i].summary==""

Two web parts:
             if (x[i].summary=="Tasks" | x[i].summary=="Shared Documents"
Three web parts:
             if (x[i].summary=="Tasks" | x[i].summary=="Links" | x[i].summary=="Shared Documents"

<script type="text/javascript">
// CEWP trick from techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com!

// techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com/2015/07/sharepoint-hide-list-and-library-column.html
// Hide column headings in web parts

function TTNHideHeadings()
{
  //Find the list  (change "Documents" to your web part's "summary" name)
  var x = document.getElementsByTagName("TABLE"); // find all of the Tables 
  var y;
  for (var i=0;i<x.length;i++) 
  {
    if (x[i].summary=="Documents")  //find the table with this name
    {
      y = x[i].getElementsByTagName("TR");
      y[0].style.display="none";  //hide the first row
    } 
  }
}

try {
  // for 2010 and 2013
  ExecuteOrDelayUntilScriptLoaded( TTNHideHeadings, "sp.js" );
}
catch (e) {
  // for 2007
  _spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push('TTNHideHeadings');
}
  
</script>

Using SharePoint Search To Find Sites You Have Access To

Did you ever wonder if there's more to SharePoint? Sites you may have permissions to, but no one ever told you about? Sites like the rumored jokes site and the "free stuff" site? You can use search to find these sites!
ContentClass is a SharePoint 2013 Managed Property that is used to find many SharePoint things by their "type". Two ContentClass values of interest when searching for sites are "STS_Site" and "STS_Web".
Tip: For more on what you can do with ContentClass see SharePoint Power Searching Using ContentClass and also here: http://techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com/2015/02/sharepoint-2013-list-and-library.html

STS_Site

The STS_Site property is used to find site collections, or actually just find the top level sites of site collections. To list all of the top level sites that you have permissions to see, search for "ContentClass:STS_Site". (See warning below!)

My test user Sam found 8 site collections and my administrator account found 38.

STS_Web

The STS_Web property is used to find subsites. To list all of the subsites that you have permissions to see, search for "ContentClass:STS_Site". (See warning below!)

Sam found 9 subsites while my administrator account found 158.

Find all sites you have access to…

Just combine both searches with an "OR" to show all of the sites you have access to. (Remember that Boolean operators like AND, OR and NOT must be in UPPER case.)

Adding Keywords

A little tip: If you add keyword to your STS_Web and STS_Site queries you will not be searching content in the site. You instead will be searching for that keyword as a property of the home page or content that might be displayed on the home page. The following search will only return results when "plane" in somewhere on the home page of the site:

Warn'n matey, here be dragons, or at least duplicates…

SharePoint 2013 search hides duplicates by default and treats many of the things returned by STS_Site and STS_Web as duplicates. Over half of my subsites are missing using an out of the box search! Administrators can fix this little issue by following the "Option 2" steps here: http://techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com/2015/04/sharepoint-2013-search-weirdness-part-1.html.

STS_Site <> SPSite

A note to developers and administrators: SPS_Site is not the same as SPSite. It's actually finding SPWebs, but only finding those that are top level webs.

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SharePoint 2013 Search Weirdness – Part 4: More Duplication Weirdness

 

A continuation of the "Search Weirdness" series!

How many Announcement Lists do I have?

In the first article of this series I showed how something like a series of Purchase Orders that differ in only the PO number, date and a few other details can appear to SharePoint 2013 search as duplicates and be excluded in the default search results. I have found something stranger… it seems that sometimes all Announcement lists look the same to search and are also treated as duplicates. Lists!

As an example, I did a search to find all Announcement lists using ContentClass:STS_List_Announcements and found only 8 in my entire test farm.

  

I then edited the search results page and changed the duplicates setting (steps here) and then found all 23 of the Announcement lists.

  

I duplicated the issue in both a test farm (15.0.4649.1000 June 2014 CU) and in the today's version of Office 365. Going forward I'm recommending that the "Remove Duplicates" feature be disabled on all search result pages. Now all I need to do is write a PowerShell script to do this.

 

Another Test

Just in case it has something to do with the Enterprise Search Center, I tried the test using "This Site" in a site that had two announcement lists, one titled Announcements and the other titled Jokes. The search only found one list. Note that in the refiner section there are two authors listed. If I click Sam then I can see the Jokes lists while if I click Mike I can see the Announcements list. But never both! The refiner seems to know that they are both there.

_layouts/15/osssearchresults.aspx

The problem with this duplicate problem is that the "This Site" search sends me to the _layouts/15/osssearchresults.aspx page, which is not customizable with Edit Page. I have no place to turn off the "Remove Duplicates" feature!

 

Solution?

In the Enterprise Search Center, edit each results page to turn off the "Remove Duplicates" feature. For "This Site"… tell the users to use "Everything" instead, which redirects them to the Enterprise Search Center.

If you need to restrict the "Everything" search to a single site then use this:

   contentclass:STS_List_Announcements   site:yourserver.sharepoint.com/sites/training

Fun……………………

 

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SharePoint 2013 Search Weirdness – Part 3: When do Daily and Weekly Search Alerts Get Sent?

 

A continuation of the "Search Weirdness" series!

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Search Alerts are Different!

Unlike list and library alerts:

• You cannot create them for other people. There's no place to type an email address.
• You cannot request an immediate alert.
• You cannot pick a time:

List / Library alert options:

Search Alert options:

 

So when are they run?

You would assume (always a dangerous thing to do) that Daily and Weekly summary search alerts would get created overnight. Turns out they get sent at an exact time, but a different one for each alert!

While working on a new SharePoint 2013 search class I was trying to find out which timer job created the alert emails and if I could set the time they are sent. TechNet documents only a single timer job, "Immediate Alerts", that runs every five minutes. While I could change that interval, I could not find an option for the "nightly jobs". Turns out there isn't any such thing.

I had always assumed (again, dangerous) that these ran overnight. The only documentation I had found in TechNet only said this:

"The daily alerts will have a 24-hour day, date, and time span calculated and stored in the respective database table. A weekly alert will have a seven-day day, date, and time span calculated and stored as part of the individual alert record."

It just says "calculated" and does not say "when". Then I ran across this blog article by Chris Domino and the light bulb went off:

http://www.chrisdomino.com/blog/post/The-Truth-About-How-Daily-SharePoint-Alerts-Actually-Work

When you create a daily alert it is scheduled to run every day at the time you created the alert. I.e. You created the alert at 2:00PM, it will processed every day shortly after 2:00PM. The same applies to weekly alerts. You created the alert at 2:00 PM on a Tuesday, it will be processed every Tuesday at 2:00 PM. I went out and looked as the SQL tables (never do this at home!) and there it was, to the minute, scheduled 24 hours or 7 days in the future.

 

But that's for an on-premises SharePoint installation. Office 365 is different!

In my Office 365 tenant my daily alerts are initially scheduled 17 hours in the future and then every 24 hours after that. My guess is that Office 365 is using GMT. So when I schedule a daily alert at 3:45 PM it runs 8:45 AM every day. Five hours off. Hum…  would that mean my tenant is running in Central time? Don't know… just guessing…

 

Another day… another new thing to discover…

 

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