Hiding the "View All Site Content" and "Recycle Bin" links in SharePoint

In my experience, there has been more than one client requesting/requiring I hide the "View All Site Content" and "Recycle Bin" links on the out-of-the-box (OOTB) SharePoint Quick Launch navigation normally located on the left hand side of the rendered page. Why? Evidentially, giving users with low-level privileges to edit pages and lists items should not always dictate they have the same access rights to view all site content. Okay, so be it. So what are our options?

Well, there is more than one way to skin a cat — er, SharePoint.

As with a lot of different solutions for SharePoint, there are several approaches one could take to successfully accomplish this — some cleaner than others — and it is also dependent upon whether or not you are working with WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007.

To get a better understanding, lets look at the code pertaining to the VASC and RB links on the default master page:

<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td>
<h3 class="ms-standardheader">
<label class="ms-hidden">
<SharePoint:EncodedLiteral runat="server" text="<%$Resources:wss,quiklnch_pagetitle%>" EncodeMethod="HtmlEncode"/>
</label>
<SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl runat="server" PermissionsString="ViewFormPages">
<div class="ms-quicklaunchheader">
<SharePoint:SPLinkButton id="idNavLinkViewAll" runat="server" NavigateUrl="~site/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx"
Text="<%$Resources:wss,quiklnch_allcontent%>" AccessKey="<%$Resources:wss,quiklnch_allcontent_AK%>"/>
</div>
</SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>
</h3>
<table class="ms-recyclebin" width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td nowrap>
<SharePoint:SPLinkButton runat="server" NavigateUrl="~site/_layouts/recyclebin.aspx"
id="idNavLinkRecycleBin" ImageUrl="/_layouts/images/recycbin.gif"
Text="<%$Resources:wss,StsDefault_RecycleBin%>" PermissionsString="DeleteListItems"/>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

As you may already see, there are a few ways we may be able to approach this. One method would be to hide the links using CSS.

Some have suggested to use the following CSS.

#ctl00_PlaceHolderLeftNavBar_idNavLinkViewAll
{
visibility:hidden;
display:none;
}

#ctl00_PlaceHolderLeftNavBar_idNavLinkRecycleBin
{
visibility:hidden;
display:none;
}

The problem with this is you are left with a blank space where the VASC and RB once were. A better way I found which collapses the space is to use the following:

/* hides VIEW ALL SITE CONTENT */
h3.ms-standardheader {
visibility: hidden;
display:none;
}
/* hides RECYCLE BIN */
table table.ms-recyclebin {
visibility: hidden;
display:none;
}

This CSS code can be added to one of two places. If you're not dealing with MOSS, or you have not enabled the Publishing feature in MOSS then the down and dirty way would be to modify the core.css file in the 12 Hive. It is found here:
12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES\CORE.CSS

While this is a fast and simple way to hide the link it isn't best practices to modify core.css and isn't supported by Microsoft. Also, if you ever install any future updates/releases/hotfixes from Microsoft you are risking having your work overwritten by the Microsoft installation.

I personally like to follow best practices supported by Microsoft, have ways to back out of my customizations, and never risk my stuff gets overwritten by any future updates or installations to SharePoint. Having said all of this, I am left with a few more options.

If you are working with MOSS 2007 and you have the Publishing feature enabled you can set an alternate CSS file and add your custom CSS there. This file can be created in SharePoint Designer and saved to the Styles Library (more on that topic another day), or the file can be added to the 12 hive via xcopy or through a feature. In either case, once the CSS was written it would be applied through the SharePoint UI by browsing to Site Actions > Site Settings > Modify All Site Settings, and under the Look and Feel heading click on Master Page Settings. All the way at the bottom of the page is a section to select an alternate CSS file. Click apply and you're done.

Another option would be to check out Mark Wagner's solution and blog post here:
http://www.crsw.com/mark/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=36

His article covers and provides a solution (WSP) with more information on how to hide (remove) the View All Site Content link and/or the Recycle Bin link from the quick launch navigation without having to customize the master page. Instead, an additional "View all site content" menu item is added to the Site Action menu and is accessible only to users having the AddAndCustomizePages access rights.



This is a nice feature when dealing with WSS 3.0 or collaboration sites which don't have the publishing feature enabled, because by that link is already there on Publishing enabled sites. Because it is a feature, you can activate or deactivate it for each site as needed. Here is the new feature that will appear in the list of Site Features for a web site.



Even though this may fulfill technical and business requirements for hiding the link I don't like the fact that you are left with an empty row at the top of Quick Launch.

Here is a picture of the typical View All Site Content link as it appears on a SharePoint web site and how it looks after it is hidden.

Before



After



Now you are left with having to do some custom work to your master page to remove the table row, and that was probably not what you were looking to do when you signed up for a packaged solution. If you cannot change your master page then try my suggested CSS above. If you are looking for a packaged fix the I guess Mark's solution is the right one for you and you're done. BUT, if editing the master page is an option, read on.

One of the best additions to WSS 3.0 and MOSS is something called security trimming. This new enhancement is leveraged all over the place in SharePoint. What's more, you can leverage it to solve the issues around the "View all site content" and Recycle Bin" links. By changing the PermissionsString property value in the SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl tag, you can control the level of visiblility for the VASC and RB links to users with different permissions. Here are some of the different values that can be set:

ViewFormPages: View forms, views, and application pages, and enumerate lists. This is the default value used in SharePoint.

BrowseDirectories: Enumerate files and folders in a Web site using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and WebDAV interfaces.

ManageWeb: Grant the ability to perform all administration tasks for the Web site as well as manage content. Activate, deactivate, or edit properties of Web site scoped Features through the object model or through the user interface (UI). When granted on the root Web site of a site collection, activate, deactivate, or edit properties of site collection scoped Features through the object model. To browse to the Site Collection Features page and activate or deactivate site collection scoped Features through the UI, you must be a site collection administrator.

AddAndCustomizePages: Add, change, or delete HTML pages or Web Part Pages, and edit the Web site using a Windows SharePoint Services–compatible editor.
DeleteListItems: Delete items from a list, documents from a document library, and Web discussion comments in documents.

NOTE: The "BrowseDirectories" permission is common to both the "Members" and "Owners" group permission levels, but is not set for the "Limited Access" (anonymous users) permission level. See a complete list of the SPBasePermissions Enumeration here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spbasepermissions.aspx

Well, there you have it. If you've found other methods that work just as well or better, I'd love to hear them.