Hi all,
OK - You're definitely gonna love this one! Our story begins a week ago when I came for a system check in on of our customer's MOSS farm. He saw many errors in the Event Log regarding search and wanted to know WTF. After a quick search, I found out that this was actually a known issue and was hot-fixed and available for download in the Microsoft site. I thought that the guys would be happy but instead they came up with a very good question: "We want to do be able to do it ourselves! Where can we find a list of known Office/MOSS 2007 issues (and if possible a direct link to the proper KB)?"
I couldn't find something like that anywhere so I decided to bite the bullet! Premiering in this post, I present you a huge list of known KB's and Hot fixes for Office/MOSS 2007! I'll try and update this list any now and then and of course – if you came across issues that are not in this list, SHARE, SHARE, SHARE!
And as promised, this post is dedicated to Eli, Ilan, Ami and all of the good guy in MMN factory (it's a code name – don't bother figuring it out... :-) for triggering the idea in my head. Here we go:
WSS - Response.End() after blob streaming causing performance impact on x64 platform
KB Article Id: 939077
SEARCH – Duplicate Best Bets should not be allowed.
KB Article Id: 939077
WSS – Content deployment - The file 'XXXX' is not checked out...
KB Article Id: 939188
WSS – CDCR:Tool request to automate site collection repartitions
KB Article Id: 939035
WSS – NAME.DLL wrong versioning causes crash in IE in OWSSUPP.DLL.
KB Article Id: 938888
WSS – Special character encoding problem during content deployment in combination with variations.
KB Article Id: 938536
SEARCH – Modified date in search result is shown as yesterday/tomorrow date
KB Article Id: 938537
SEARCH – "View by Modified Date" does not work fine after Incremental Crawl
KB Article Id: 938536
WSS – One-Time timer jobs cause 2 hour delay in backup and restore when DST in effect.
KB Article Id: 938663
MOSS – The kpi creation succeeds and shows kpi with green status if the cell has '#NAME?' because of incorrect formula calculation.
KB Article Id: 938182
WSS – Attachment for item in content approval enabled List disappears after edited.
KB Article Id: 938183
WSS – Unable to use 'e-mail as a link' feature in WSS 3.0.
KB Article Id: 938241
SEARCH – Cannot search for anything beyond the first slide of a PowerPoint (ppt) presentation.
KB Article Id: 937901
SEARCH – Search does not index or return results when DB Status is set offline.
KB Article Id: 938569
WSS – DocLib with > 1000 folders with unique permissions causes error in sitedata webservice.
KB Article Id: 937901
WSS – Groups on a higher site level will be deleted when subsite was created by an own template and deleted later.
KB Article Id: 937901
WSS – Cannot delete a field of type "Computed" from the document library
KB Article Id: 937901
SEARCH - Define a scope when using the AdvancedSearchWebPart for entering the parameters and the CoreResultsWebPart to execute the search and display the results.
KB Article Id: 938568
WSS – Track Passport users by their PUID(Office Live).
KB Article Id: 937498
WSS – CDCR:Request for external blob storage API (Office Live).
KB Article Id: 938499
WSS – Non-RFC compliant extra ':' in initial Workflow email causes mail to be interpreted as TEXT on non-Exchange systems.
KB Article Id: 937906
MOSS - Users unable to create MySite.
KB Article Id: 937207
SEARCH - Unable to search content of protected charts in Excel.
KB Article Id: 937203
WSS - Check the canary header in addition to the form body.
KB Article Id: 937203
SEARCH - Lists with a null description are not returned when order determined by description field.
KB Article Id: 937775
SEARCH - The Notes URL could not be converted in from http:// to notes:// even it is defined in the Server Name Mappings.
KB Article Id: 937203
SEARCH - Browser Back button in "Advanced Search" hides search criteria in use (also for the following searches).
KB Article Id: 936877
SEARCH - The word breaker for Traditional Chinese Names in the CHT version of MOSS is not Correct.
KB Article Id: 937039
SEARCH - Override DB level permissions by using Readers Fields at the document level.
KB Article Id: 936877
WSS - Need tool to clean up problem sites caused by the inheriting permissions.
KB Article Id: 935958
SEARCH - Lag time when starting a crawl increases based on number of documents in system.
KB Article Id: 936867
WSS - Documents do not maintain 'modified by' user information after export/import operation using stsadm.exe.
KB Article Id: 936867
WSS - Inheriting permission causes destructive error : User can never access to the site collection.
KB Article Id: 937038
WSS - In AD creation mode, Create User sends email even though check box is unchecked.
KB Article Id: 936867
WSS - Web Part page Relative URL path is broken and result in "File Not found" unexpectedly.
KB Article Id: 936867
SEARCH - Search queries intermittently timeout.
KB Article Id: 936867
WSS – Forefront virus scanner generates error causing document upload to fail.
KB Article Id: 936867
WSS – Removing user from site collection causes content deployment to fail.
KB Article Id: 936867
SEARCH - Sites that require forms-based authentication or cookie-based authentication are not crawled in SharePoint Server 2007.
KB Article Id: 934577
SEARCH - The starting of master merge failed on the AnchorProject and left the indexes marked as being already involved in merge. Subsequent merges do not start.
KB Article Id: 936877
MOSS - You receive the following error message when you search for a GUID in SharePoint Server 2007: An error occurred while retrieving data from AdventureWorksInstanceBad. Administrators, see the server log for more information.
KB Article Id: 934793
SEARCH - SharePoint Server 2007 cannot index a Microsoft Exchange public folder.
KB Article Id: 934793
WSS - Issues that may occur when you use the volume shadow copy service (VSS) reference writer in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
KB Article Id: 935605
SEARCH - If you set the Hint property of a Full Text Query object to OptimizeWithFullTextIndex and then query the computer that is running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, the order of the results is sorted incorrectly.
KB Article Id: 934790
WSS - Error message when you try to install a feature in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: "The 'UserSelectionMode' attribute is not allowed.
KB Article Id: 934613
WSS - When you run a program that uses the SPWorkflowManager.ForceDehydrateHttpContextWorkflows() event to work with files that are saved in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 document library, the expected Web page is not displayed. Additionally, you receive the following error message: Service Unavailable
KB Article Id: 934790
WSS - When you upload a file to multiple Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 document libraries, an alert creation e-mail message is sent from the document libraries as expected. However, an alert notification e-mail message is sent from only one document library. You would expect an alert notification e-mail message to be sent from all the document libraries to which you uploaded the file.
KB Article Id: 934790
WSS - When you use the ItemAdding event to add a new file to a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 document library, the path of the document library folder cannot be found.
KB Article Id: 934790
WSS - A file that is attached to an e-mail message is not put in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 document library
KB Article Id: 934882
SEARCH - You browse a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web site that contains different language subwebs. When you search one language subweb for an item that does not exist, you receive an error message as expected in that language subweb. However, when you search for an item that does not exist in a different language subweb, you unexpectedly receive an error message in the first language subweb that you searched.
KB Article Id: 934790
WSS - You run an SQL query to change the properties for a user that you created on a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web site. When you run the PeoplePicker tool to search for a user, the original user is unexpectedly found. You would expect the PeoplePicker tool to use the changes that you made to the user's properties when it searches for a user.
KB Article Id: 934790
WSS - You add two List Web Parts to a page of a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web site. The second List Web Part is connected to receive data from the first List Web Part. When you click the option button for an item in the first List Web Part, only that list item appears in the second List Web Part as expected. However, if you sort the results of the first List Web Part and then click the option button for a different item in the list, all list items unexpectedly appear in the second List Web Part.
KB Article Id: 934790
WSS - The Web File Properties dialog box displays incorrect properties for a document that is saved in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 document library
KB Article Id: 934253
WSS - A default column value is saved to a document regardless of the content type of the document in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 document library
KB Article Id: 932922
SEARCH - No results are returned in the search results when you search for people by site membership in SharePoint Server 2007
KB Article Id: 935196
WSS - E-mail alerts do not work when the server that is running Windows SharePoint Services uses port translation.
KB Article Id: 933818
SEARCH - You cannot search Microsoft Excel workbooks in a Windows SharePoint Services document library.
KB Article Id: 933818
SEARCH - Users receive search error messages and event ID 10038 error messages are logged in the Application log on Web front-end servers
KB Article Id: 933819
SEARCH - No documents are returned in the search results when a user searches for Lotus Notes content in SharePoint Server 2007
KB Article Id: 933939
SEARCH - When SharePoint Server 2007 crawls a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 public folder, the following error message is logged to the gatherer log: "The item could not be accessed on the remote server because its address has an invalid syntax"
KB Article Id: 933586
MOSS - When you select the Re-encrypt all credentials by using the new encryption key option to reencrypt credentials in a Single Sign-On (SSO) environment, the "IX_SSO_Credentials" index is renamed to "IX_SSO_Temp_Credentials." When the SSO database is queried, the query fails.
KB Article Id: 932917
MOSS - A URL that contains an extra slash mark may take longer to open on a server that is running SharePoint Server 2007
KB Article Id: 932918
SEARCH - Complex remote links are not crawled when the links are in the same SharePoint Server 2007 portal
KB Article Id: 932901
SEARCH - When you use the FulltextSqlQuery object to perform a full-text search of a server that is running SharePoint Server 2007, the search results may be sorted in random order.
KB Article Id: 932917
WSS - You cannot disable VSAPI scans when you schedule manual scans of content in SharePoint Server 2007 and in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
KB Article Id: 933138
WSS - The file name of a file that you download from the Document Center is changed to use UTF-8 canonical format and is missing the file name extension
KB Article Id: 932914
WSS - You cannot create a content database after you install Windows Internal Database SP2
KB Article Id: 932914
MOSS - You run a program that uses the SharedWebService.OnlineServerAddresses Web service to determine the URL for its search service. When several requests are made to the same Web service at the same time, a deadlock situation may occur.
KB Article Id: 932919
WSS - Previously published pages that are no longer published cause duplicate links to appear in the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 content database.
KB Article Id: 932621
WSS - You receive the following error message when you try to open a form in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: "The Page is modified. Please reopen it"
KB Article Id: 932621
SEARCH - You cannot crawl case-sensitive Web content in SharePoint Server 2007
KB Article Id: 932619
WSS - One or more custom programs do not finish successfully when you run multiple custom programs that use the BreakRoleInheritance function in the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 object model.
KB Article Id: 932056
WSS - When you try to show an error message in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web site programmatically by using the ItemCheckingIn() event, the custom error message text is not shown. Instead, you receive a garbled error message that may resemble the following error message: 1!.512s!
KB Article Id: 931636
WSS - You cannot select the values for a custom field when you try to edit the properties on the FldEditEx.aspx page on a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web site.
KB Article Id: 932055
SEARCH - You cannot perform a search query after you upgrade to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on a Windows Small Business Server 2003-based computer.
KB Article Id: 931008
SEARCH - When you search a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web site and then click View by Modified Date, you receive the following error message: "Your search cannot be completed because of a service error. Try your search again or contact your administrator for more information."
KB Article Id: 931636
SEARCH - When you perform an incremental crawl on a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web site, the crawl may stop when one or more of the following conditions are true; No changes are found, No new links are found or No new updates are found.
KB Article Id: 931496
WSS - Changes that you make to the "List View" Web Part are not retained after you save the site as a template in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
KB Article Id: 926284
WSS - When you try to delete a message in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 programmatically, you receive a null reference exception message.
KB Article Id: 931636
WSS - Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 currently does not comply with daylight saving time (DST) in Western Australia for the years 2006 to 2009.
KB Article Id: 932347
SEARCH - If the parent farm contains two or more start addresses that contain the same host in SharePoint Server 2007, efforts to provision the content sources fail.
KB Article Id: 931496
OUTLOOK - When you locate a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 custom list in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, CPU usage that is reported in Task Manager may reach 100 percent. Additionally, CPU usage does not decrease until you exit Outlook 2007.
KB Article Id: 935515
WSS - When you locate a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 custom list in Outlook 2007, CPU usage as reported in Task Manager may reach 100%. Additionally, CPU usage does not decrease until you exit Outlook 2007.
KB Article Id: 931637
That's it for now (turned out to be quite a bunch huh?),
Adir Ron.
Hey all,
Haven't published anything in a while so my head is pretty packed with new info I'd like to share. However, even the greatest journeys start with one minor step (I think I heard this sentence in Spiderman? Or was it Lord of the Rings? No way I came up with this sentence by myself! Post a replay if you recognize…) so let's dive into our first subject. This post will be dedicated to a very burning Enterprise Search subject – Boolean and Wildcard support in MOSS. I especially think we need to clear once and for all what is supported via MOSS Interface, what is supported in the API and what has no support what so ever.
The Engine's Capabilities
The underlying search engine supports considerably more query capability than is exposed the in-box UI and standard keyword query syntax. For some scenarios, this additional functionality will be valuable and worth implementing some custom search UI to exploit. Two interesting top engine capabilities we see in customer scenarios are wildcard matching and Boolean expressions. Support for both capabilities is present in the engine.
Wildcard matching: we distinguish prefix matching (di*matches dig and dip), infix match (d*g matches dog and dig), and suffix matching (*ig matches pig and dig). The engine in 2007 supports prefix matching, but not infix and suffix matching. Wildcard matching is available in the engine through the CONTAINS operator in Search's SQL query syntax. (The syntax is documented in http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms493660.aspx. Typical fulltext queries use the FREETEXT operator – at least one clause with this operator must be used in order to sort results by relevance.)
Prefix matching is also available from the keyword syntax (i.e. the queries you enter in the default search box) via the property:value syntax – all property:syntax elements are by default prefix matches. So a query for animal:do will match both dog, dogfish, and donkey. Using animal:"dog" will only match dog and not dogfish.
Boolean operators: Unitary Boolean operators "+" (for and) and "-" (for not) are also available in the keyword query syntax and can be entered in any search box.
In addition, the engine supports Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT, and predicate grouping. Boolean operators are only available at the OM level, not in keyword queries. Arbitrary levels (in the 100s) of statement nesting are supported. Boolean operations over properties (<Author = foo> or <size greater than 500K>) can only be combined with Boolean operations over FREETEXT and CONTAINS clauses with an AND, for relevance ranking to be meaningful when sorting by rank. For more information on FREETEXT and CONTAINS, see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms495829.aspx.
Programmatic applications that will benefit from these engine capabilities are good match for 2007 search in some cases (further described below.)
Relevance Ranking, Stemming, and Wildcards
Wildcard queries affect relevance calculations. In particular, queries which have CONTAINS elements (or only propertyname:value keyword elements from the search UI) will not be relevance ranked. FREETEXT queries that contain a mixture of literal terms and prefix match terms will be relevance ranked, but only using the literal terms in the query. Thus, there is a tradeoff in 2007 between general wildcard matches and relevance ranking. This is why wildcarding is not exposed as a default behavior search center query box.\
In addition, prefix-matched terms using the propertyname:value syntax will never be stemmed. CONTAINS queries are never stemmed.
The Search Center and Search Results Page
The out-of box search results page is what actually issues queries and processes the results. It does so via a hidden object which constructs and issues a query to the search query OM and then offers the results to all the other controls on the page. This control is not public, replaceable or extensible in the 2007 version.
Custom Scenarios & Guidance
So two levels of customization are possible for customers who wish to augment user-entered queries and/or add Boolean or wildcard matching functionality to their search UI. (Basic customization of results layout and customization of some search behaviors is also possible via configuration of the search web parts. This is described at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa637082.aspx and for brevity's sake isn't discussed here.)
- Write a custom search query web part – the customizer can rewrite the freetext query entered by the user and alter the scope directive passed to the results page. This is straightforward and easy to maintain but only useful for a small number of scenarios, like term expansion, term->scope mapping, turning prefix match wildcard patterns into the propertyname:value syntax, and the like.
This approach is advisable in scenarios where there is great control over site master page and controls generating queries (as one or more search query web parts will need to be replaced). The amount of custom code is minimal and would be supported as a custom search app. (ie. Dev support).
-
Write a new results page from scratch – results, best bet display, paging, advanced search, etc. Depending on the app, this may not require changing the search query parts, but everything on the results page must be written using the Search OM.
This approach provides full access to the underlying query OM and query language, but at the expense of custom work – the amount of work necessary depends on the app and especially the richness expected of the query augmentation and search results. If Boolean logic, prefix matching, grouping were required, this is what it would take to offer it. Enormous flexibility in constructing queries is then available, though the restrictions of the underlying engine (what kinds of wildcards are supported, the relationship of ranking, etc.)
A search UI custom-coded in this fashion could co-exist in a separate pane within the search center, but obviously whatever special logic and query capabilities would only be present in the custom pane.
This work is advisable only in scenarios where the query results capabilities expected are very well defined, don't expose all the features of MOSS 2007's results, where relevance ranking isn't expected for queries composed only of wildcard matches, and where there is a strong development and support commitment to custom code. For extensive duplication or customization of search results, coding costs could be measured in months, though simpler projects are possible. For highly published or Internet-facing sites, or for focused search experiences with specialized requirements and expectations about results rendering, this approach can be feasible as long as dev resources are on hand to develop and maintain. For intranet facing sites with expectations about interoperability with SharePoint collab services, or where dev resources won't be on hand to develop and support, this approach is not feasible.
Bottom line – Full-on replacement of the search results UI is possible but advisable except in specific circumstances.
For More Information
See the MOSS Search SDK, especially the pages at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa981100.aspx and http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms546434.aspx
That's it. If you're more interested in Wildcard support and what MOSS provides in not digested enough– don't forget the free and very useful Ontolica Wildcards support. I've discussed this matter in one of my previous posts. Anyway, I hope things are a bit clearer now…
Bye,
Adir Ron.