SharePoint 2010 and the Quick Launch

Ok, first off, there are a tonne of posts out there about the Quick Launch and nothing on here is original. I’m simply trying to combine all of the various details and questions I get into one resource. So here goes…

• Hiding the Quick Launch on SharePoint 2010 Pages
• Adding/Returning the Quick Launch to SharePoint Web Part Pages (multiple methods)

Hiding the Quick Launch on SharePoint 2010 Pages

Click here for details on how to hide the Quick Launch, Recycle Bin and the left side space on an existing SharePoint Page. May I also suggest you then Export your Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) and then upload it to your Site Collections Web Part Gallery so you can simply reuse this web part over and over.

Ah what the heck, for those of you, like me, that just need the code to plunk into your CEWP (I’m too lazy to click the link), here it is again…

Adding the Quick Launch to SharePoint Web Part Pages

Creating new web part pages in a document library is a common task for creating dashboards. For whatever reason, the Quick Launch is disabled on these pages and requires a little more work to get it back. You have a few options:

Option 1 – If you have already invested a bunch of time in an existing Dashboard page and don’t want to start from scratch (Option 2), you will want to Launch SharePoint Designer, open your dashboard page, and choose ‘Advanced Mode’ in order to customize the page. Then follow the instructions outlined here by Phil Cave. Effectively, you want to remove the following from the page:

< asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId="PlaceHolderNavSpacer" runat="server"> 
< asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId="PlaceHolderLeftNavBar" runat="server">

and this

<SharePoint:UIVersionedContent ID="WebPartPageHideQLStyles" UIVersion="4" runat="server">
 <ContentTemplate>
 <style type="text/css">
 body #s4-leftpanel {
 display:none;
 }
 .s4-ca {
 margin-left:0px;
 }
 </style>
 </ContentTemplate>
< /SharePoint:UIVersionedContent>

Option 2 – Create a new SharePoint page from scratch. The benefits are you can totally define your own custom SharePoint Zones/regions for your layout. Wonder Laura outlines that approach here.

Option 3 – You can override the default behavior for the Web Part Pages templates if you have access to the files on the server itself. This may/may not be what you are after, but should you want to have all web part pages include the quick launch…

• Take a backup
• On your SharePoint Server(s), navigate to the document templates (I’m assuming English here) at C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions14TEMPLATE1033STSDOCTEMP.
• Open the folder SMARTPGS. The pages are in the order they appear in the Web Part Page Wizard. Remove the following lines (by the way, this came from here… http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Server/MS-SharePoint/Q_26408371.html but as Experts-Exchange wants you to authenticate (or use Google Cache , I thought I’d help you out: