Adding web parts to DispForm.aspx in SharePoint

Please note that all new SharePoint related content is now hosted on the blog at www.muhimbi.com.

For some reason the ‘Site Actions’ menu does not display the ‘Edit Page’ menu for all pages in SharePoint. This is particularly baffling considering the editing functionality is available in the background.

Here is how you enable it:

1. Navigate to the page you want to add a web part to, e.g. a Content Editor Web part.
    
2. Remove everything on the URL after “?ID=#“
    
3. Append the following to the end:

       &PageView=Shared&ToolPaneView=2

That is it. Common pages you may want to edit this way are the DispForm.aspx and EditForm.aspx pages for the files in a document library or any other list.

A nice side effect is that once a page has been modified the ‘Edit Page’ menu becomes available in the ‘Site Actions’ menu.

Please note that all new SharePoint related content is now hosted on the blog at www.muhimbi.com.