Sharepoint headaches...

I realize that sharepoint services is a free product, and you get what you pay for, but I'd expect a little more.

One of my biggest headaches is the datasheet view. The datasheet view is a wonderful tool. I brings an unprecedented amount of excel features into the web. I am pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of the such things like the fill down controls (including the keyboard shortcuts.)

The datasheet view obviously uses an activex control to give this functionality to the web browsers. This is understandable, and I don't mind tell my users that they must allow the activeX control. But What is not ok with me is the availability of the activeX control. Most activeX controls are available for download from the site where they are to be used. But does MS allow you to download this activeX control from your sharepoint site? No! In fact the DLL which runs the activeX control is only available on the MS Office 2003 install disks. So at first though one may think that in order use the datasheet you must have Office 2003 installed. But wait... it gets better. Although the dll used for these features are available on the MS Office 2003, they apparently can only be installed from the MS Office 2003 Pro edition, standard will not enable these features, even if the dll is copied to your computer. SO if I understand this an web feature, is tied to an activeX control (which makes sense) but the activeX can only be installed by the installation of the Professional version of Office 2003. This means what rolling out sharepoint as a means to collaborate within a corporate environment to enable collaboration where users can not install software, fails because it requires the user to install expensive software just to use the web features. Here's an idea why not package the DLL into sharepoint, so that users can download and use it directly from the site they are at.


Another feature obviously lacking is the undelete feature. Sure there are MSDN articles describing how to add a undelete feature... But I have a degree in CS, and looking at this implementation makes me scratch my eyes out. Could they make it any harder to implement such a simple feature. The answer is yes. Try color coding events in the calendar.