SharePoint Recycle Bin

Can you believe it? SharePoint Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 do NOT come with a way to recover files deleted from the document libraries except restore the entire WSS or SPS site(s) depending how you backed up SharePoint. This requires an installation of SharePoint. Worse yet, this can be extremely time consuming. As it turns out Microsoft heard the cry and came up with a very nice solution. They felt it was needed so much that they published it via gotdotnet workspaces (http://www.gotdotnet.com/Workspaces/Workspace.aspx?id=8437a203-f377-401c-b23d-ae59e6f05b80). The solution is called Recycle Bin. There is even a very detailed installation guide. The installation is tedious, but straight forward and actually takes under 45 minutes from start to finish. The solution does have a way for end users to retrieve the deleted files, but this can be done using a web part or just have your SharePoint administrator get the file from the windows directory (this is where the files end up when they are deleted once you install this). There are some other solutions, but I think this is the best for the money (free) and it doesn't void any support with Microsoft since it doesn't modify the database directly. Here are some other options to look at though:

• Dark Blue Duck Recycle Bin Enabler: http://www.darkblueduck.com/Products/RecycleBinEnablerWSSTRIAL.aspx ($1200++)
• Developer type solution from MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/02/RecycleBinforWSS/default.aspx (FREE)
• Bryant Like's Blog describes (voids support with MS): http://blogs.sqlxml.org/bryantlikes/archive/2005/02/14/2776.aspx (FREE)