As Wiki’s become more popular with companies using SharePoint Foundation 2010, I am often asked how to create a Contents page for Wiki’s.
Research has found that out of the box, Wiki's don't come with
their own Contents page. However out of frustration (and not
wanting to have to pay for extras), I have found a workaround that
could work from an administrator's management point of view, but
maybe not so much from end users as it would be hard to enforce
they follow the process below. So here goes …
I created a sample wiki library called Jo Wiki. This
automatically creates 2 new pages - Home and How to Use This
Library. I edited the Home page, changed the Text Layout to
One column with sidebar, and in the sidebar, inserted the Jo Wiki
list.
Perfect!! Just some editing needed to make the list appear
as I wanted, but now how do I change the other existing Wiki
pages? Herein lies the problem. I have yet to find how
you can copy or template the list I have edited on this page, to
make it appear on the other pages.
I have tried copying the source code from the Home page, and
pasting it into the sidebar HTML on the second page, but no list
appears. It seems the only way to get the list onto the other
existing Wiki pages is to add the list, which means for each page
editing the list to make it appear as the last.
So what about creating new pages? I tried copying the home
page to another page from within Windows Explorer, but on opening,
no content appears.
What to do? I don't want end users having to re-create the
formatting for each new wiki page.
Then I recalled a few years ago finding a workable solution for
WSS 3.0 - you could copy pages in SharePoint Designer. So I
opened SharePoint Designer and copied the page from there.
SUCCESS!! I now have a new page already containing the contents
web part. I can now go and edit with new content.
More success on returning to SharePoint - the new page is showing
in the Contents list!!
Unfortunately I will still have to manually change all the other
existing pages, as there appears to be no way to template a Wiki
page. I hope to find a better solution sometime soon, but in
the mean time I hope this helps.