I recently changed some local account settings on my Windows 7 computer that I use to create and modify SharePoint sites with SharePoint Designer. I modified the UAC settings and added my domain user account to the local administrators group, now after opening a couple of sites, I found that I couldn’t see my workflows and other formatting options that I usually work with. I would usually right click on the SPD shortcut and click “Run as Administrator” and would be prompted to login with my domain admin credentials. But after making the account changes, it would simply open SPD.
After doing a bit of research, I found that it may be associated with the Contributor Settings. However, when attempting to modify these settings, I was notified that I needed to have administrator privileges to do so.
Here’s what I did to resolve the issue.
1. Create a shortcut using the runas command.
C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /user:Username@yourdomain.local /env “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\SPDESIGN.EXE”
- Right click on your desktop and click new > shortcut, then type the following in the field.
- C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /user:Username@yourdomain.local /env “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\SPDESIGN.EXE”
- Replace the username with your domain administrator username.
- Replace “yourdomain.local” with your network’s domain name.
- Click next and type a name for the shortcut and click finish.
- Double click on the shortcut and type your administrator password. (Note: you won’t be able to see any characters being added in the command line)
sharepoint designer contributor settings
2. Now, in SharePoint Designer, click on “Site” in the menu bar and click “Contributor Settings”
sharepoint designer contributor settings
3. Select “Content Authors” and click “Modify”
4. Under “General”, check the box “Allow unrestricted use of SAharePoint Designer.
That’s it. Now you should be able to see your workflows and any other content that was not previously visible.
