How to approve/publish a couple of pages together in SharePoint?

Question

I am using SharePoint 2007 + Windows Server 2008 with SharePoint 2007's publishing portal template.

I find when I edit a couple of pages, I need to check-in/publish/submit for approval/approve one (page) by one (page). Any ideas or solutions to select a couple of unpublished page and submit for publish/approval together?

Answer 1

Try this:

1. Go to Site Actions, Manage Content and Structure.
2. Click the View menu and change to:
   • Checked Out To Me for drafts that needs to be checked in (unfortunately there is no built-in filter to check for all drafts)
   • All Draft Documents for pages to be published
   • Pending Approval for pages to be approved
3. Click the 'select all' icon above all of the tick boxes.
4. Click the Action menu and choose the relevant option.

I have found cases where 'select all' hasn't worked and I've needed to go through each page separately. Still, better than nothing I guess!

Answer 2

I believe you can perform a bulk check-in using the "Manage Content and Structure" page (site actions).

Answer 3

Jaap's answer above is right on target. Once you get into the Manage Content and Structure module, you need to navigate through the explorer-like view to the Library where the pages/documents are housed (will show in the right-pane). Once there, mark the checkboxes next to the ones you need to publish/check-in then go up to the action bar above and choose Actions-->Check-In. This will force a check-in of the content. Doing this is especially helpful for those users who bulk upload new documents through the Windows Explorer method and don't want to check-in each document one-by-one.

The only caveat to doing this, as Alex noted, is that SharePoint will sometimes 'ignore' your request because there are required metadata columns that have to be filled out before they can be checked-in. You'll have to update the values, then do the above bulk check-in steps.

Answer 4

I have no workflows enabled on lists and am still unable to Approve more than a single item at a time using any of the methods described.

BTW, the Reports views are a part of the Content and Structure tool. There is no distinction here. You can also add your own custom views to the drop-down list via the Content and Structure Reports list (/Reports%20List/AllItems.aspx).

One good example is an All Draft Documents view which allows admins to manage minor versions across the entire site collection. You could create similar views for Check Out state etc.

All Drafts

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Answer 5

I dont think what Jaap said will work for sites with workflow enabled. You are still looking at using command line

open cmd prompt

go to bin folder in the 12 hive and try this

STSADM -o PublishAllItems -url yourURL -list Pages

this gotta work