Here is a great Youtube Video by okta. The guy giving the talk made the tool called oauthdebugger.com and oidcdebugger.com – sweet. He humbly states – don’t do this or that even if you trust me. It helps us to be on the straight an narrow especially with (likely) someone else’s data and tools (our clients)

• Authorization code – the main one on the 1st part of the video
• Implicit (front channel) for things where the is no backend available
• Resource owner/pw – not used much but machine to machine backend
• Client Credentials – used to make old apps work but not used for new apps

OpenID Connect IS OAuth with an added scope called openid

I was quite miffed that Malwarebytes identified my code as a virus. I had some Excel VBA macros that downloaded files from sharepoint in a fractoin of the time compared to opening them as a file from SharePoint. Brilliant … until “MalwareBytes just saved your life by killing Excel for you before you were doomed forever” … but … but hey – my program just poof … gone. Changes, long macro (that during VPN/Covid days) takes forever and now … gone. After some debugging it was the line URLDownloadToFile that paused Excel for about 4 minutes before then caused MalwareBytes to kill it. I did put in a ticket (and expect it to never be addressed) but suggested that if a file is in the trusted sites list – perhaps don’t view that as an exploit. It is likely faster to re-program things.

Suggestions online only have 3 options to download from SharePoint.

• map a drive, use the drive (and optionally kill the drive mapping). This seems lame. Plus you are opening a file using Explorer type access – which I said was slow
• Use URLDownloadToFile() which – EVERYONE IS USING – that is why it is likely why people who make viruses use it – it seems to be quite popular with Virus developers
• REST – way to complicated – no one has done it without asking for usernames and passwords everytime (I did figure it out – and this is how I am doing it now)

Alas – I DID figure out the bits and pieces to NOT as for credentials and to camp-out on an existing connection to SharePoint. I am doing this from an Excel VBA macro – so we are 99% guaranteed that we are connected. Complicated – you have no idea – YES IT IS.

Here is my journey:

It sure takes many moons to see your drives if you switch to and from a VPN. We developed a switching app that maps drives to sharepoint or the VPN. After some digging around – i found a powershell script that did a System.IO.DriveInfo() command which seemed to delay things for a small amount but the drives became active right away. Cool I said. So i then modified it to do a

• netuse then
• System.IO.DriveInfo() then do a
  • and print out the status of each drive
  • and finally
• netuse (to see any changes)

It seems to work. The “ah ha” moment came from when I tried this program from this guy. I have since morphed it into function that accepts the drive letter and the \\server\share path and does a netuse in front and in back.

What a dizzying nightmare. First, web browsers NOW have a built in PDF capabilities so most people don’t have to install a 3rd party PDF viewer like Adobe or Nitro. I install these 3rd party PDF viewers on PC’s Mac OS X – but for heaven’s sake – don’t allow it to be the default on a Mac. Just don’t.

But for PC’s if you use Bluebeam for PC’s as your PDF viewer and the source of those PDFs is SharePoint – there are >5 layers of setting to consider and each browser has its quirks. Want to skip to the recommendation (which is just “live with it and learn how”? click here)

Simple – go to this website and type the commands to install a new powershell. Well – in Microsoft fashion – not quite that simple. First running the PowerShell commands needs one to DOWNGRADE the allowed SSL to Tls1.2 on the powershell first. Then … you can get going.

1. Open Powershell as an admin (right mouse click on it and choose Open as Administrator)
2. Then type
   [Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12
3. Then follow the steps in the main article. I chose all the default options as I am using Sharepoint Online

Invoke-Expression (New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sharepoint/PnP-PowerShell/master/Samples/Modules.Install/Install-SharePointPnPPowerShell.ps1')

NOW we can rock out. This article mainly helps me over the hump of the proper Tls1.2. Where next? I am going to write my first SPFx Sharepoint Foundation web part – cause they took my old WebParts away for use on the Modern UI pages in Sharepoint 2016 and Online. Kindle to the rescue with the book called Mastering Sharepoint Framework: Master the SharePoint Framework Development with Easy-to-Follow Examples

I was getting individual fields from a Sharepoint List and the SOAP request (old code) needed the viewId (a GUID) and it took a long time to find it. It is quite easy to find (now that I found it once) but if you go to the classic view and click Library->ModifyView and scroll all the way to the bottom-right – you will see your viewId in url-encoded text at end of the URL. Done. Its tricky to know what GUID was being sought and it wasn’t on my blog – so it took longer. Never again 😉 You can stop reading but below is the context in which the viewId is needed.

You have to get script access added by the admin – so for one client I had to beg for it – but since jQuery is part of Sharepoint – all we do is add some code and it makes the items between <h2> tags appear and disappear. Add a little more CSS to get a + and – added to the right and we are good to go. I would use a different <hX> or make my own – but Credit goes to this guy:

https://info.summit7systems.com/blog/how-to-create-dynamic-accordions-in-sharepoint-pages

Bitly accounts have no QR ability – mental – must be a paid version or a royalty thing. Anyways – type this in to any browser and you instantly can download a QR code png. First change the last part to your own short code. Instructions are here for other options.

https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=177×177&chld=H&choe=UFF-8&chl=https://myShortCode.com/12345

BUT – that can’t be read from an iOS device camera taking a pic or clicking on a web page. So here is a text version so you can copy it easier:

First, I couldn’t write the title until I got to a) the correct example online, then b) the proper credentials (a work-mate(s) hinted towards the answer) and c) the exact exception text “The sign-in name or password does not match one in the Microsoft account system.”

Sharepoint – as usual … SUPER FOR CONTRACTORS WHO GET PAID THE HOUR. (argggg).