I have used Penzu as my main journal app for many years. Recently when Apple launched its Journal app I have been looking at it and other competitors. Then I realized that I am not able to get my own data from Penzu. There is no reasonable Export function.

So I found my own way to get my journal data. I could name this blog post to something like “How to export the unexportable”, or “How to intercept XHR requests in Puppeteer”, but my case is about Penzu, so I’ll stick to this particular title.

Remember the old comments in SharePoint Lists? I am sure there are tons of lists that use the Append-Only Comments. They are implemented using versioning. The problem is that it is hard to export the comments, unless you know the tricks. The trick I want to share comes from a colleague of mine. The reason why we need export all the comments is that we need to document and save/archive the decision making process that took place in the comments field.

The blog post below describes the technical details about how Web Parts can be exported using a hidden tool in OOB SharePoint, though this requires manual assembling of a special url. If you are just interested in a solution for an easy Web Part Export function, just proceed directly to my new blog post where you can download my tool that you can add to your web browser.

Web Part Exporter

Today my colleague Johannes Milling wrote an awesome post: Export SharePoint List Data To XML Directly from the GUI He uses the old and forgotten RPC-based web service owssvr.dll (that has existed since SharePoint 2003). This url pattern is used to get the xml-formatted list data for a specific ListView: [source] http://<site_url>/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List=&View=&Query=*&XMLDATA=TRUE [/source] To automate this I have written a PowerShell function. All the details are in the comments: [source language=“PowerShell”] function Export-OIPSPListDataAsXml { <# .Synopsis Exports list items as xml .DESCRIPTION This function uses a built-in hidden service owssvr.dll in SharePoint .PARAMETER Web SPWeb or a url for the SPWeb object where the list resides .PARAMETER ListName List Name (List Title) .PARAMETER ViewName Name of the List View to export the data .EXAMPLE Export-OIPSPListView -Web http://myawesomesite -ListName “Teddy Bears” -ViewName “All Items” .EXAMPLE Export-OIPSPListView -Web $webInstance -ListName “Top Links” -ViewName “All Items” .Notes Name: Export-OIPSPListDataAsXml Author: Anatoly Mironov Last Edit: 2014-09-11 Keywords: SPList, SPWeb, SPListView, Xml .Link http://chuvash.eu #> [CmdLetBinding()] param( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPWebPipeBind]$Web, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [string]$ListName, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [string]$ViewName) $spWeb = $Web.Read() $list = $spWeb.Lists[$ListName] if (!$list) { throw “List $ListName on web $($spWeb.Url) could not be found” } $view = $list.Views[$ViewName] if (!$view) { throw “View $ViewName on web $ListName could not be found” } $url = “{0}/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List={1}&View={2}&Query=*&XMLDATA=TRUE” ` -f $spWeb.Url, $list.ID, $view.ID $wc = New-Object Net.WebClient $wc.UseDefaultCredentials = $true $wc.DownloadString($url) } [/source]

Ville spara min blogg som en dagbok för utskrift. Exporterade hela bloggen som xml. Inga problem. Sedan var det dock nästan omöjligt att enkelt skriva in det i Word / OpenOffice. Jag har skrivit en liten css-fil som formaterar det lite så att man kan skriva ut. Lägg till:

<?xml-stylesheet type = "text/css" href="wordpress.css"?>

direkt efter:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

Lägg filen “wordpress.com” i samma mapp. Här är wordpress.css

channel title {
 font-size:3em;
}
channel description {
 color:green;
 margin-bottom:1em;
}
item title {
 font-size:2em;
 font-family:Arial;
 margin-top:1em;
}
creator {
 color:green;
}
creator:before {
 content:"Skrivet av: ";
 color:black;
 font-style:italic;
 font-size:0.8em;
}
post\_date:before {
 content:"Datum: ";
}
comment {
 margin-left:3em;
}
comment\_author:before {
 content:"Kommentar av: ";
 font-style:italic;
 color:black;
}
comment\_author {
 color:green;
}
comment\_date:before {
 content:"(";
}
comment\_date:after {
 content:"):";
}
/\* Ska inte visas\*/
link, channel language, pubDate, 
guid, author, base\_site\_url, 
base\_blog\_url, wxr\_version, generator,
post\_id, is\_sticky, post\_type, post\_name, 
status, comment\_status, menu\_order, 
post\_parent, ping\_status, post\_date\_gmt, 
category, postmeta,
comment\_id, comment\_author\_email, 
comment\_author\_IP, comment\_date\_gmt, 
comment\_approved, comment\_type, 
comment\_user\_id, comment\_parent {
 display:none;
}
/\* block style \*/

title, description, post\_date, comment {
 display:block;
}