I'm back from vacation and I've got a backlog of your questions, so let's get right down to it with a genuine mystery:
We used to have check boxes next to each of the photos/diagrams in the photo libraries, so that you could mark what you needed to download and then act accordingly. However, those boxes disappeared...obviously we did something wrong... (they do not appear anymore also in the dropdown menu next to the "Details" Thumbnails", "filmstrip" so we can't use those buttons as well.) How can we add back those boxes?
After trying (and failing) to break my own picture library in the manner described, I decided that it was time for some creative Googling. Since Google rarely fails, this path of action ultimately led me to Sadalit Van Buren's SharePoint blog, A Matter of Degree. In particular, it was a post entitled, SharePoint Slide Library - Selection Check Box Disappears from Grouped View which delivered the goods.
Unfortunately, said goods resulted in a classic good news/bad news scenario. The good news is that (I would hazard a guess that) Sadalit has identified the cause of your disappearing check boxes. The bad news, however, is that it's essentially a bug and, depending on your own particular situation (i.e., your preferred manner of organizing and working with files in your picture library), the "fix" may not be very much appreciated.
Sadalit writes, "I discovered that the checkbox disappears consistently when you collapse a grouped view by default, but that it appears normally when you expand the view by default." Which leads me to believe that grouping is what's been introduced to your picture library, and which is the cause of your disappearing check boxes. If so, hopefully, your own experience will mirror Sadalit's, and expanding the view for each group will resurface the missing check boxes. If this isn't the problem/solution in your case, however, please let me know some additional details as to what you're seeing, and I'll be happy to take another crack at it.
NOTE: For a screen shot of the collapsed view with missing check box, and for additional details on Sadalit's discovery and quest for a solution, please see his aforementioned post.
I should also take the now standard opportunity to work in my obligatory plug when looking at thorny good news/bad news cases such as this one. If an elegant solution doesn't already exist to ease your SharePoint pain, who you gonna call? Bamboo's Custom Solutions team. Then sit back, relax, and let our SharePoint professionals develop the cure for whatever ails you.
Posted
Mar 25 2009, 03:12 PM
by
John Anderson
John Anderson joined Bamboo Solutions as Manager of Content & Syndication in May of 2008 after a 12-year career at AOL. New to SharePoint at the time of his hiring, John was tasked with creating a new blog for the just-launched Bamboo Nation community in which he would document his daily SharePoint learning process. Thus was born the end user-centric SharePoint Blank, for which John authored 200 posts within a year, and which he continues to write today (albeit much more sporadically). Currently serving as Managing Editor, John sets the tone for Bamboo Nation as its lead blogger, and oversees content across Bamboo properties.