"Connect to Outlook" Disabled - SharePoint 2013

As mentioned in my last article, we have been recently migrated to SharePoint 2013, users are still reporting issues and today’s article is one of those issue.

Machine configuration entities where the issue has been reported:

OS: Windows 7, 32-Bit.

IE (Internet Explorer): IE9, 32-bit.

SharePoint 2013

Office 2013

Site permissions: Site collection administrator.

Problem description:

Not able to connect CALENDAR list to Outlook, while doing the specific action i.e. ‘connect to outlook’ is always disabled.

Error message:

This control is currently disabled.

Troubleshooting done:

-checked the office version and its already 32-bit office.

-disabled the protected mode of IE

-reduced the high priority of IE to lesser one

-restarted the web client service

-Cross-checked the IE version and make sure it should not be 64-bit version.

-checked the client-integration option by means of web application settings and its already enabled.

Resolution:

-Open the site collection on which you are not able to ‘connect to outlook’

-site actions

-site settings

-manage site features

-There is a feature called "Minimal Download Strategy"

-Deactivate this feature

Once this feature will be deactivated then try to ‘connect to outlook’ please check the results again…

Pretty much sure that your issue will be resolved.

Happy SharePoint to all of U...

Importance of this feature i.e. Minimal Download Strategy

Minimal Download Strategy in SharePoint 2013 improves rendering performance when browsing content where large parts of the page do not change providing a more fluid navigation experience. 

The Minimal Download Strategy is by default enabled on Team sites, Community sites and a few others in SharePoint 2013. Once this feature (and it's also a Feature, notice the capital F, we'll get back to that later) all pages for that site is rendered "through" the /_layouts/15/start.aspx page.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues, Thank you.

Product applies to:

SharePoint Server 2013

Reference:

Microsoft Outlook 2013 Tutorial | Connecting SharePoint Calendars To Outlook

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULwa6i2g5g4

SharePoint 2010 Object Model Classes

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 offers a highly structured server-side object model that makes it easy to access objects that represent the various aspects of a SharePoint Web site. From higher-level objects, you can drill down through the object hierarchy to obtain the object that contains the members you need to use in your code. Reference

Here there are some SharePoint Object model classes.

In the top SPFarm class is there.

SPFarm: This reference the entire SharePoint Server Farm.
By using this you can create a new farm or you can connect to a existing a existing farm.

Namespace: Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration

SPServer: By using this class you can browse through the collections of servers belongs to the Farm.

SPSite: Represent a Site collection.

SPWeb: Represent a web site.

SPUserToken: The SPUserToken class represents a token for a valid SharePoint user.

SPList: SPList corresponds to a single list instance, whether that is a list of items or a document library.

SPListItem: This defines a reference to a specific item of a list.

SPDocumentLibrary: This type represents a document library.

SPFile: This class is used to enumerate the files contained in a document library.

SPPrincipal: This class is the parent class for SPGroup and SPUser.

SPControl: This class we need while developing web controls or Web Parts.

SPContext: This is a very useful class and it has some direct methods to access useful information about current requests.

Different DLLs for Client Object Model SharePoint

There are different client object model like managed client object model, ECMAScript object model, Silverlight client object model etc. To work with these object models SharePoint provides certain classes which exists inside some dlls. These dlls are very leightweight as compared to SharePoint server object model. So it is a good idea to know about the dlls used and there locations.

Managed Object Model:

Dlls needed:

- Microsoft.SharePoint.Client
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime

Location: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI (If SharePoint installation done in C drive)

ECMAScript Object Model:

JS needed:

- SP.js , SP.Core.js , SP.Ribbon.js , and SP.Runtime.js .

Location: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS (If SharePoint installation done in C )

Silverlight Object Model:

Dlls needed:

- Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Silverlight
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Silverlight.Runtime

Location: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\ClientBin (If SharePoint installation done in C drive)drive)

Client Object Model SharePoint 2010 Details:

MOSS 2007 provides Web services which are difficult to use and always returns XML documents and XML data needs to be parsed manually.

These are simple APIs to add, retrieve, update and manage data in SharePoint. There are some tasks you can not do using client object model like creating a web application.

These classes are very easy to use and prefix sp is removed in the naming of client object model classes. For example in Server object model if the class is SPList now in client object model the class name is List.

Behind the schene client object model interact with some wcf services to communicate with SharePoint.

To work with client object model you need to refer 2 dlls which can be found in the following locations, refer to Managed Object Model, as discussed above:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI

The 2 dlls are:

- Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll

Here is an example to create a list of type Announcement list by using SharePoint 2010 client object model.

using (ClientContext context = new ClientContext(http://Amardeep:8787/sites/Training))

{  //Create a new list

ListCreationInformation listCreationInformation = new ListCreationInformation();

listCreationInformation.Title = "My Announcements List";

listCreationInformation.Description += "Here is my list created by client object midel";

listCreationInformation.TemplateType = (int)ListTemplateType.Announcements;

listCreationInformation.QuickLaunchOption = Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.QuickLaunchOptions.On;

List list = context.Web.Lists.Add(listCreationInformation);

context.ExecuteQuery();
}

More Details: Refer to the link.