The issue is that on Windows Server machines (Window Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2), the ‘Desktop Experience’ feature contains a required component for Excel (or any application posting content to SharePoint).

Normally you don’t see this because on a Windows client machine (Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP), Desktop Experience is turned on by default – but not for Server OS’s. The underlying component at issue here is WebDAV. Excel desktop need it for the publishing process because they post content to SharePoint as if SharePoint was a remote file share. Thus if you are going to run Excel desktop on a Windows Server OS and publish content to SharePoint – then you need ‘Desktop Experience’ turned on.

Enjoy!

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/malag/archive/2010/02/15/incoming-email-settings-link-disappears-from-document-library-settings.aspx

One of my customer had created a custom document library deriving from OOTB document library. They are able to create their document library from custom list definition properly without any issues. But when in the document library created using custom list definition, if you go to list settings page, it does not show "Incoming Email settings" link under "Communications" column. Incoming Email settings are setup properly and OOTB document library has got incoming email settings link and it is getting emails properly. Just libraries created from their custom list definition does not have Incoming Email settings link!

So what is causing the issue?
Digging into SharePoint, found that this is hard-coded and SharePoint will only show Incoming Email settings link for OOTB lists of type Announcements, Event, Document Library, Picture Library, XML Form, Discussion Board, Posts.

Now all is explained. Gallery derives from Document Library, but it is not Document Library. Remember, all things PowerPivot run through SharePoint!

Enjoy.

1. Go to Site Settings -> Site Collection Features -> Make sure “SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure” is activated.
2. Go to Site Settings -> Manage Site Features -> Make sure “SharePoint Server Publishing” is activated.
3. Finally then on the Site settings page, you should get an entry for Master Page under the “Look and feel” section.

Modifying the master page works fine for the landing page, document libraries, calendar and other pages—but causes an error with the PowerPivot Gallery.  The error is—“The referenced file ‘/_layouts/Gemini/ReportGalleryView.ascx’ is not allowed on this page."  The problem is that the page cannot load because the control ReportGalleryView.ascx is not marked as a safe control. To mark report galllery view as a safe control the following like should be added to web.config on "SafeControls" (under C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\<web app port#, e.g. 80), in the <SharePoint>/<SafeControls> section

<SafeControl Src="~/_layouts/powerpivot/*" IncludeSubFolders="True" Safe="True" AllowRemoteDesigner="True" SafeAgainstScript="True" />

Enjoy.

(With my thanks to Fernando Delgado, our excellent setup dev for working up this solution)

(RTM build 10.5.1600.1) As a picture is worth a thousand words, here is the error:

This failure occurs when installing PowerPivot (either “existing farm” or “new server”) after a previous SSAS installation has been done on the machine.

Cause:

In SQL Server 2008 R2, the msmdsrv.exe process (which is the SSAS engine) includes a reference to the PowerPivot SharePoint integration dll (as do other components). Since the normal SSAS installation does not include the SharePoint integration dll, the registration marks the .NET assembly cache as failed. Later on, when you install PowerPivot, we copy the SharePoint integration dll to the right place, but the .NET assembly cache has already been marked failed from the previous SSAS installation and .NET does not attempt to load it (and you get the error message above).

Solution:

A. Best solution: If using “New Server” PowerPivot installation option then delay installing any instances besides SQL Server RDMBS until after you have PowerPivot installed and configured. That way you never hit this error condition. Doing a SQL Server RDBMS installation only for “existing farm” is OK – it is the installation of other non-RDBMS components that is the root cause of the issue.

B. If you have an RDBMS only instance(s) installed and are getting ready for a PowerPivot installation (“New Server” or “Existing Farm”): Save the following text to a file named setup100.exe.config (no .txt extension):

1. Save the following text to a file named setup100.exe.config (no .txt extension):

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
   <configuration>
     <runtime>
       <disableCachingBindingFailures enabled="1" />
     </runtime>
   </configuration>

2. b. Copy the file to the folder: %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\SQLServer2008R2\x64\ and install PowerPivot for SharePoint.

C. You have already installed PowerPivot and gotten the “Could not load file or assembly” error above, then:

1. Uninstall the PowerPivot instance of Analysis Services, this will also uninstall PowerPivot for SharePoint components.
2. Reboot the machine
3. Run scripts to re-enable PremiumSite feature. See http://powerpivotgeek.com/2010/06/14/uninstalling-powerpivot-does-what-arg/
4. Reboot the machine
5. Copy the setup100.exe.config file, as outlined in (B) above, to %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\SQLServer2008R2\x64
6. Install PowerPivot for SharePoint.

Step 1: Start Services.msc

• For each service using the machine account, update the password and start the service

Step 2: Start IIS Manager. Under Application Pools, select each of the app pools that use the account that you are changing:

• Click Advanced Settings
• Click Identity
• Set the username and password
• iisreset

Step 3: Start SharePoint Central Admin, click on Security

• Select ‘Configure Managed Accounts’
• Edit the account
• Enter ‘Existing Password’

Step 4: If RS is installed, start ‘Reporting Services Configuration Manager’

• Select ‘Database’
• Select ‘Change Credentials’, click ‘Next’ to get to the Credentials page
• Enter new password
• Take the defaults of the rest of the pages and finish the wizard

And for more details, look in BOL under: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee210642%28SQL.105%29.aspx

Updated: 21-Dec-2009 –> note that you also might have to update the PowerPivotUnattendedAccount if you have done a NEW FARM installation. In NEW FARM, we create this account in Secure Store and assign it the Farm administrator’s username and password. If that is the password that has changed, then you will likely also have to go into the PowerPivotUnattendedAccount application in Secure Store and enter a new password.

Updated: 14-Jun-2010 –> depending on your configuration you might also have to change the password for the SQL RDBMS, AS instances or auxiliary processes such as SQL Agent. (I just got burned on this today when I had a password change, ran through this list of items to update and forgot SQL Agent and the RDBMS).

Enjoy.

Make sure to run this executable as the service account under which Excel Calculation Service is running. If you are not sure what account that is, first go to Central Admin’s “Security” page:

Then under “General Security” chose “Configure Service Accounts”:

In the drop down list on the right side you are looking for a “Service Application Pool” which contains your “Excel Services Application Web Service Application” (in the middle list). The account at the bottom would be the account you want to make sure you run the test application as to accurately simulate what ECS is doing when you are actually using SharePoint. Using the wrong account might give misleading results.

You must provide the User Principle Name (UPN) of the interactive user to the test application. All users have an implicit UPN which can be expressed as <user>@<domain> (I would be “leegr@redmond”). You may also have been given an explicit UPN which might look slightly different (although the implicit UPN would still work). If you are concerned that you are not using the right UPN, you can dig through the ULS log to find the UPN associated with the failure. This is the log entry that I got when I turned the c2wts service off:

SPSecurityContext.WindowsIdentity: Could not retrieve a valid windows identity for NTName=’REDMOND\leegr’, UPN=’leegr@microsoft.com’. UPN is required when Kerberos constrained delegation is used.

Note that the bit about “Kerberos” can be ignored because we do not require Kerberos constrained delegation to work (and neither does c2wts … it just returns a limited token in this case which is fine for us). Also, your log entry might look a bit different since I don’t know if they output different things to the log based on the exception type at this level.

To compile this code, you need to link to:

• Microsoft.IdentityModel
• System
• System.Core
• System.IdentityModel
• System.ServiceModel

using System;
using System.Security.Principal;
using System.ServiceModel;
using System.ServiceModel.Security;
using Microsoft.IdentityModel.WindowsTokenService;

namespace C2WTSTest
{
    class Program
    {
        static void OutputUsage()
        {
            Console.WriteLine(“Usage:”);
            Console.WriteLine(“/tc2wtstest.exe <upn>”);
            Console.WriteLine(“/tExample: c2wtstest.exe dwickert@redmond”);
        }

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            if ((args.Length != 1) || (string.Compare(args[0], “/?”) == 0) || (string.Compare(args[0], “-?”) == 0) || (string.Compare(args[0], “?”) == 0))
            {
                OutputUsage();
                return;
            }

            string upn = args[0];

            WindowsIdentity windowsIdentity = null;
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(upn))
            {
                try
                {
                    Console.WriteLine(“Attempting to acquire windows identity for upn: ‘{0}’”, upn);
                    windowsIdentity = S4UClient.UpnLogon(upn);
                }
                catch (SecurityAccessDeniedException)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine(“Could not map the upn claim to a valid windows identity. Security Access Denied”);
                    return;
                }
                catch (EndpointNotFoundException)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine(“Could not map the upn claim to a valid windows identity because the c2wts service was unavailable”);
                    return;
                }
                catch (FaultException e)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine(“Could not map the upn claim to a valid windows identity because the c2wts service returned a fault”);
                    Console.WriteLine(e.ToString());
                    return;
                }
                catch (Exception e)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine(“Could not map the upn claim to a valid windows identity because of an unexpected exception”);
                    Console.WriteLine(e.ToString());
                    return;
                }
            }
            else
            {
                throw new Exception(“No UPN claim found”);
            }

            using (WindowsImpersonationContext ctxt = windowsIdentity.Impersonate())
            {
                Console.WriteLine(“Successfully acquired token and impersonated user: ‘{0}’”, WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name);
            }

        }
    }
}

HTH
Lee