Adding Web App Icons to Office 365 “E” Plans

Just a quick Office 365 tip I found. The company I’m working with is doing a kick the tires POC on Office 365 Enterprise E3 plan. In their infinite wisdom (and yes, that’s a joke), the Office 365 folks have decided to not give the “E” plan users the same as the “P” plan (Small business)  users in that when a user logs in to the portal, they don’t have these very convenient icons that allow them to create Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote documents without having to go through hoops. And by hoops, I mean not only for the users, but the administrators as well since they have to manually create the document types in the libraries in order for users to create them. What a huge pain in the butt. What I don’t need is for Microsoft to make my job harder.

So here’s something I stumbled across that was posted on the Office 365 community threads between Myles Jeffery, and Office 365 MVP (wow, they already have them??), and Alex Kap. Here’s the jist of it –

You will need to know something about working with SharePoint Designer to do this. I don’t know a lot, but had enough to get by for this.

You’ll also need to create a new subsite off your Home site that uses the Express Team Site template. That appears to be the only way to get the icons and the code to add them to any document library. You’ll also have to create a new document library since, like I said, I’m not that good with Designer and I usually don’t like messing with “default” anything, but rather a copy of it.

• In the subsite, open the “Documents” library on that site.
• Click on the Site Actions dropdown. Select Site Settings.
• Click on Customize Documents.
• Click on Save document library as a template.
• Give it a filename, etc., and check Include Content.
• Once created, open SharePoint designer and open the subsite in it.
• Open the Lists and Libraries, double click on the site.
• Click on the All Files in the left pane, and then the Document Library you created. Click on the + next to the library name. Click on the + next to Forms.
• Right-click on AllItems.aspx and select Advanced Edit.
• Add this text at the top, after the others like it –
• <%@ Register TagPrefix=”WpNs0″ Namespace=”Microsoft.SharePoint.Spx” Assembly=”Microsoft.SharePoint.Spx, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c”%>
• Add this text to any place you like after the <zonewebpart> tags –
• <WpNs0:DocumentLibraryGettingStartedWebPart runat=”server” AllowEdit=”True” AllowConnect=”True” ConnectionID=”00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000″ Title=”Getting Started With Documents” IsIncluded=”True” Dir=”Default” IsVisible=”True” AllowMinimize=”True” ExportControlledProperties=”False” ZoneID=”Main” ID=”g_6800d3b0_231a_4a39_9c1d_06cada73e4dc” FrameState=”Normal” AllowHide=”True” SuppressWebPartChrome=”False” DetailLink=”” HelpLink=”” MissingAssembly=”Cannot import this Web Part.” PartImageSmall=”” AllowRemove=”True” HelpMode=”Modeless” FrameType=”Default” AllowZoneChange=”True” PartOrder=”2″ Description=”” PartImageLarge=”” IsIncludedFilter=”” __MarkupType=”vsattributemarkup” __WebPartId=”{6800D3B0-231A-4A39-9C1D-06CADA73E4DC}” WebPart=”true” Height=”” Width=””></WpNs0:DocumentLibraryGettingStartedWebPart>
• Right-click on the filename in the tab on top, and select Save. You’ll get a warning, but go ahead anyways.