SharePoint Designer in SharePoint 2013

In this article we can explore an overview of SharePoint Designer.

What is SharePoint Designer?

SharePoint Designer is a no-code solution creator for SharePoint. It helps in:

1. Customizing Pages
2. Creating Workflows
3. Setting Permissions
4. Managing Lists & Libraries

You can download SharePoint Designer through the link provided in References section. The appropriate one (32 bit, 64 bit) to download depends on your Microsoft Office version.

The evolution of SharePoint Designer starts from Microsoft Front Page and HTML Designer tool.

How to start SharePoint Designer?

After installing the appropriate version, you can choose the PAGE tab > Edit in SharePoint Designer.

On clicking the above menu item, you can see the SharePoint Designer launched as below.

You can also launch SharePoint Designer from Start Menu. Use the Open Site dialog to enter your site url. You need to enter credentials as well.

Editing a Page

Now we can try editing a page using SharePoint Designer.

Step 1: Open Site Pages

Click on the left side link named Site Pages.

Step 2: Click Edit button

Now select the Home page & click the Edit button from toolbar.

You can see the page is in Edit Mode now. Scrolling down, you will notice there is an Orange colored area & White colored.

The orange color denotes the site definition content area & white color represents the user modified area.

To edit the orange colored area you have to click the Advanced Mode button from the toolbar.

SharePoint consists of 2 types of pages – Application Pages & Site Pages. The application pages are residing as files. The site pages will be stored in content databases.

Step 3: Insert an HTML Label

Now click on the INSERT tab > HTML button > Label item

You can modify the text as shown below:

<label id="Label1">THIS IS AN HTML LABEL</label>

Step 4: Test the changes

Now we can save the file & test the changes.

Click on the Save button shown in left-top of the SharePoint Designer.

Now refresh the same page inside your browser.

Now you can see the changes we made.

This is a small scenario of using SharePoint Designer. In real world scenarios we will be playing with CSS, JavaScript along with SharePoint Designer. We can also edit the existing SharePoint New/Edit forms using SharePoint Designer.

References

Download http://bit.ly/PHvUiV

Summary

In this article we have explored about SharePoint Designer. In real world scenarios SharePoint Designer is governed through Central Administration.