OneNote 2007 Taskbar Icon in Windows 7

After loading Windows 7 RTM a small issue I encountered was that the OneNote 2007 taskbar icon stopped appearing. Right now my temporary workaround:

• In OneNote go to: Tools - Options - Other and uncheck the Place OneNote icon in the taskbar and then recheck the Place OneNote icon in the taskbar.
  
  
• The icon will reappear in the taskbar after you reselect the checkbox


• Unfortunately this isn't a permanent answer because it is gone again after you reboot.

I need to research this issue some more to see if I can find a permanent fix. There are some good notes about this in this OneNote blog about SP2. There was also a little more about it on Microsoft's blog.

Unleash the Power of OneNote and SharePoint

The notes for our Unleash the Power of OneNote and SharePoint presentation have been posted to the Captaré Training site and the video has been posted to the I Heart OneNote site.

Download the OneNote 2007 Package containing all of the notes here and view the video presentation from the I Heart OneNote community.

• Presentation Notes - (OneNote 2007 Package)
• Video Presentation

InfoPath Column/Properties Promotion Limit

During our Captaré SharePoint InfoPath Training class today we got what I thought was a simple question:

• What is the limit on the number of columns/properties you can promote to a SharePoint 2007 InfoPath Form Library from InfoPath 2007?

My gut response to this question was that it was the same column limit as a document library would have or maybe a SharePoint list. Quick research showed:

• You can have:
• 2,000 columns in a document library
• 4,096 columns in a list


• These are not hard limits, but you might experience library and list view performance degradation as the number of columns in a document library or list increases.


• There are two good articles which detail the limitations of SharePoint. One in TechNet and a simpler one on this SharePoint blog.

After a little further research, I found that my gut response was wrong. The two relevant posts I found stated that the Form Libraries had the same limitations as the old SharePoint 2003 list limitations.

• 64 Single line of text and Choice (drop-down menu or radio buttons)
  
• 31 Multiple lines of text and Choice (check boxes (allow multiple sections))
  
• 32 Number and currency
  
• 32 Hyperlink
  
• 16 Date and time
  
• 16 Lookup
  
• 16 Yes/No
  
• 8 Calculated
  

The two references I pulled from were these posts:

• Publishing InfoPath Forms - Updating Content Type Failed
  
• How many columns can we publish to SharePoint Form Library using InfoPath?
  

I was not able to find definitive Microsoft articles or support backing these claims up. What did make me a little suspicious though is these are the same limitations stated in TechNet as WSS 2.0 and SPS 2003 had with lists and libraries. Why was this fixed with 2007 libraries and lists, but not Form Libraries?

If anyone has definitive Microsoft References for these limitations, please let me know.

The interesting corollary to researching this issue is I think it is part of another question we were asked today about a complex form timing out when they were trying to publish it. The issue as stated in the first post is the form probably has too many columns of a certain type in it.

Recommendation:

Once you start trying to publish and use 25+ columns from InfoPath to SharePoint, you should start rethinking how you are using your data. A better long term approach is to:

• Use InfoPath to publish the data to a SQL Server Database
  
• You then have multiple view/reporting options:
  
  • Use data view Web Parts to view the data
    
  • Use SQL Server Reporting Services to create complex reports within SharePoint
    
  • Use third-party Web parts to view the data
    

Hope this helps everyone in our class and anyone else who may need it.

Finding the Last Value in a Table Column Range in Excel 2007

I was trying to accomplish something I thought would be pretty simple in Excel, finding the last value in a row within a range in Excel.

I was using a balance column and just wanted the last value (the balance) to show up in my totals row at the bottom, thereby when I filtered the list the value would still be the outstanding balance for the whole list.

There were a couple of options I found through Googling, but I didn't like any of them as they didn't work well with blank rows.


My resolution was to format the range of cells as a Table with the "Format as Table" option in Excel 2007.


By doing this it creates ranges for each column. My table looks like this:

To get the last value in (C7) for this table I used this formula:

=INDEX([Balance], ROWS([Balance]),1)

By using the Rows function here it gives me the last row within the range I am looking for and then the index provides the value.