Our Excel file originates from SAP BW. This file is automatically refreshed with the SAP BW broadcaster tool which then sends the file to a specific e-mail address (in our case, the e-mail address of the SharePoint document library). Unfortunately after the broadcaster has done its work and the file is transferred to the SharePoint site, the properties got lost and the report therefore does not appear correctly in the document library's view.The Error message we get from Excel is: The document information panel was unable to load. The document will continue to open. For more information, contact your sys admin. The form contains schema validation errors. The content of this element/item ‘{http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/metadata/propertiesRoot}properties‘ is not complete according to the DTD/scheme. Expected: {http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/metadata/properties}properties. Is this a problem with MS Excel and the SAP BW application or is this a problem with the uploading to SharePoint? If this is SP where should we look to solve this loss of Excel properties when uploading to SP?

If there is a property contained in the Excel file that is stored in SharePoint it will still be contained even if that file is subsequently opened from SharePoint or even if downloaded from SharePoint to your hard disk and opened from there. In fact if the excel file is stored in a document library and that document library has additional columns which for the row of the Excel document have had data added to them, then the downloaded version (from SP) of that Excel file will also contain those columns (with data) as Properties. (With the way non-standard properties are added varying between SPS 2003 and MOSS 2007 ( / SPS 2010)). FAQ sites: (SP 2010) http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com; (v3) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com and (WSS 2.0) http://wssv2faq.mindsharp.com Complete Book Lists (incl. foreign language) on each site.

Excel and SharePoint Metadata Synchronization When uploading Excel or other Office documents to a SharePoint Library, the document properties are mapped to the Library columns by name. Therefore, you can easily add columns to the Library as appropriate to handle the MS-Office document properties. However, if you need an extra property for the document to map from a SharePoint column it is a bit harder. In Office 2003 it was easier but in 2007 it is more confusing: Click the Office Button on the top left of Excel (2007). Select Prepare / Properties to show the doc's current properties. Click Document Properties dropdown on the top left and select Advanced Properties. Select the Custom tab. Here you can add a Name of a new property and enter a value for that property. Click Add and OK and you are all set. If the name matches a SharePoint Library column, the property will transfer when uploading or downloading the document. You will have to do this manually for one of your file, once the column is updated in library other files will just update the column created. Hope this help! I LOVE MS..... Warm Regards, Kshitiz Posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

We're testing this reply and will give feedback soon.Thanks

It however doesn't appear to update sharepoint when you change the value of the named cell. Do you need to have a macro to update this?

Much heartache and wasted time for many people fighting with DIP and WSS functionality (or lack thereof.) My comments are specific to Excel 2007 and WSS 3.0, so proceed accordingly. The issue seems to be achieving some sort of synchronization between content types (with their associated site columns) and DIPs that appear to be auto-generated when Excel documents are uploaded to document libraries that have content types defined along with a custom template. We ran into this problem when we started adding and deleting site columns from our custom Content Types. The DIP just seemed to ignore these changes, no matter what we did. This is where the profound differences between Office Integration (Create New Document) and WSS Content Management (Upload an existing document) showed up. In Excel, you need to use VBA code to manage the update of data contained in worksheet cells and DocumentProperies to WSS items enumerated in ContentTypeProperies - but you still aren't out of the woods yet. You must add sample data to your "template" that will populate the ContentTypeProperties you wish to push up to WSS, then upload this document into your document library. Opening the uploaded document from the library and looking at the DIP, you will find all of your custom server-based properties where they should be. Clear out the sample data and save your template back to WSS. Then update the Content Type definition to point at the new template that will be called when someone chooses "New" from the document library menu bar. We spent a lot of frustrating hours trying to coax the DIP into showing our revised content columns, even resorting to InfoPath edits and publishing forms - none of it worked until we followed this process. I suspect that much of this has to do with the incomplete support for DIPs in WSS, versus the explicit support in MOSS. One more gotcha for those of us who figured that WSS was "good enough" that we could save the bucks on MOSS...

JYSpringer - Hi. I've also found that if you save the document locally > save as .xls > convert back (using window button convert) to .xlsx then reupload. The document functions fine going forward. While I understand how to fix it both ways, I don't understand why it happens or how to prevent it. I have it happening on documents are not generated from anything other than excel itself. thanks.