In a previous post, I wrote about how to Create your own Web Part Page Layout Template and how to Reuse Web Part Pages. This week is just as useful: how to enable the quick launch in a standard SharePoint web part page. If you recall, in the first post I explained how the out-of-the-box web part page layouts don’t have a quick launch; why this is, it is not clear. In any case, it turns out that it’s actually quite simple to enable the Quick Launch using SharePoint Designer (see here for where I found out how to do this).

Note: This post assumes that you have a web part page created using a standard SharePoint layout.

To enable the Quick Launch:

1. 1. Navigate to the site the page is in and click Site Actions | Edit in SharePoint Designer.
      
   2. Click All Filesand navigate to the library where the page is stored.
      
   3. Right-click on the page and select Edit File in Advanced Mode.
      
   4. Find the below piece of code and delete it or comment it out.

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId=”PlaceHolderNavSpacer” runat=”server”></asp:Content>
<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId=”PlaceHolderLeftNavBar” runat=”server”></asp:Content>

Note: If you are doing this in SharePoint 2007 (and using SharePoint Designer 2007, naturally!) this is all you have to do. SharePoint 2010 requires one more step.

5. Find the below piece of code and delete it or comment it out.

<SharePoint:UIVersionedContent ID=”WebPartPageHideQLStyles” UIVersion=”4″ runat=”server”>
<ContentTemplate>
<style type=”text/css”>
body #s4-leftpanel {
display:none;
}
.s4-ca {
margin-left:0px;
}
</style>
</ContentTemplate>
</SharePoint:UIVersionedContent>

6. Save and close!And, your page now has a Quick Launch.

Image credit