Tag: Visual Basic

Accessing SharePoint Lists with JavaScript using DP Tools Part One: The Basics

SharePoint
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SharePoint LogoSharePoint lists are amazingly versatile for storing data in an “almost database” kind of way. For those with access to enterprise features and SharePoint Designer, accessing that data to create custom displays and reports is point-and-click easy. Those if us without such access have to get a little more… creative.

Thankfully, SharePoint provides a full roster of Web Services, accessible from client-side code, to leverage its features and data. Accessing these from JavaScript can be confounding or, at the very least, cumbersome. To address this in my work, I’ve created a set of abstractions to make the process as painless as possible. There are obviously other ways – many other ways – to achieve the same thing, this is simply my way of doing it.

  • This technique allows us to pull information from any site accessible to the client, local or not.
  • You and all intended end users must have Read Access to the site and list you’re working with. This is client-side code, after all.
  • You can pull data into other SharePoint pages, of course, but also into non-sharepoint web sites.
  • See my article , “Accessing SharePoint List with Visual Basic for Applications“, for examples of using the services with client-side applications such as Word and Excel.

These examples were developed against SharePoint 2010, but should also work in the 2007 and 2013 versions.

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Accessing SharePoint Lists with Visual Basic for Applications

SharePoint
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SharePoint LogoSharePoint has many useful integration points with Microsoft Office out-of-the-box, but for truly deep integration you have to roll-up your sleeves and dig into some code. While there are multiple methods to do this, one of the most versatile is leveraging SharePoint’s many web services directly via Visual Basic for Applications. For those, like me, that lack SharePoint Designer access, this is often the only method available.

This method can be used in any application that supports VBA. This includes all the standard MS Office applications – Word, Excel and PowerPoint – but also other applications such as my favorite drawing suite, CorelDraw, or Autodesk AutoCAD. These examples were developed against SharePoint 2010 and MS Office 2010, but should also work in the 2007 and 2013 versions.

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