My Favorite SharePoint Tools & Utilities – Top 50 List

Here is the list of Top 30 Best Free SharePoint Tools for SharePoint Development / Administration / Monitoring / Troubleshooting Tools and utilities to make our SharePoint work easier, faster, and efficient.

1. SharePoint Manager 2007 / 2010 / 2013
The SharePoint Manager is a SharePoint object model explorer to give a quick and easy overview of the structure and data hidden behind your SharePoint Farm. It enables you to browse every site on your local farms and all of the properties of objects. You can also change the values ​​of some properties.  

You’ll have to run this application from your SharePoint Server as an administrator. Download URL: SharePoint Manager.

We’ve SharePoint Client Browser to explore Server objects from the client-side: SharePoint Client Browser

2. WSP Builder
A SharePoint Solution Package (WSP) creation tool for SharePoint 2007/2010 which includes templates for web parts, Event Receivers, features, etc.
Download URL: https://wspbuilder.codeplex.com/

3. SharePoint Content Deployment Wizard
We can deploy content between SharePoint sites. The selected content is exported to a .cmp file (Content Migration Package) which can be copied to other servers. Download URL

4. CAML Query Designer Tools:
U2U CAML query builder: Great tool for generating CAML Queries.

URL: https://www.u2u.be/downloads/CamlQueryBuilder/setup.exe

You can also use: CAML Designer to build your CAML queries in SharePoint 2013 https://www.biwug.be/resources

5. Branding Tools
For SharePoint 2013, Download the color palette tool from Microsoft at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38182 

For SharePoint 2007, Branding Tool can be used to:
    * modify Themes
    * modify MasterUrl (Master Page), CustomMasterUrl (System Master Page)
    * modify SiteLogoUrl (Site Logo)
    * modify SiteLogoDescription (Site Logo Alternative Text)
    * modify AlternateCssUrl (Custom CSS Style Sheet)
    * view various properties of sites and themes at a glance
URL: https://brandingtool.codeplex.com/

CSS Reference Charts:
SharePoint 2010: https://sp2010notes.wordpress.com/sharepoint-2010-css-chart/

IE Developer toolbar/Firefox Developer Tools – Great Products when you work on SharePoint Branding.

6.  Custom E-mail Alert Templates for SharePoint Workflows
This is an Access 2007 tool that will create SPD Email Activity Workflow messages that look like standard SharePoint alert/task emails for you to copy into the email activity.
URL: https://unitedsupplyco.sharepointsite.net/publicfacing/bensblog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=49

7. Best Practices Analyzer
The SharePoint 2007 Best Practices Analyzer will collect all the data from your database, registry, etc., and apply a set of comprehensive best practice rules against the data set. A detailed report listing is provided after the completion, so you can make your SharePoint 2007 Portal faster and more flexible https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=cb944b27-9d6b-4a1f-b3e1-778efda07df8&displaylang=en

8. Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit 4.0
The toolkit includes SharePoint Diagnostics Tool, the Permissions Reporting Tool, the Quota Management command, and Security Configuration Wizard Manifests.
https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=cd2d09a7-1159-4d40-be1c-8efab1345381&displaylang=en

9. Gary LaPoint STSADM add-ons
This guy has written tonnes of STSADM extra functions that allow administrators to do things that can’t be done in the UI and only in the object model. No longer need to rely on Programmers so much.
https://github.com/glapointe/PowerShell-SPCmdlets/

10. SharePoint Event Receiver Manager (2007 & 2010) : Download Event Receiver Manager

11.CKS Dev
Community Kit for SharePoint offers templates to Visual Studio for SharePoint projects.
https://cksdev.codeplex.com/

12. Fiddler
Web traffic Analyzer, logs all http(s) requests between client and web server. available at: https://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/ .Alternate: HTTPWatch at https://www.httpwatch.com/

13.PowerGUI
IDE for PowerShell supports debugging and Intelli-Sense. Download at: https://powergui.org/downloads.jspa

14. JavaScript Debugger – https://www.JsFiddle.net

15. SharePoint Feature Admin Tool

Repair/Un-install features from SharePoint: https://github.com/achimismaili/featureadmin

16. SharePoint list item editing tool
Edit meta-data columns (such as created by), Bulk update.

https://splistitemeditor.codeplex.com

17. SPServices Jquery Library for SharePoint https://sympmarc.github.io/SPServices/

18. SharePoint 2010 Bulk Document Importer https://spbulkdocumentimport.codeplex.com/

19. SPUtility.js https://github.com/kitmenke/sputility can be used to: Set or get field values, make a field read-only, hide a field from view.

20. SPDisposeCheck
Identifying memory leaks and wrong disposes.https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/SharePoint-Dispose-Checker-01da48e8

21. The SharePoint Software Factory:  is a Visual Studio Extension helping SharePoint newbies, as well as experienced developers to create, manage and deploy SharePoint solutions without having to know every tiny XML and C# secret. https://spsf.codeplex.com/

22. SharePoint Log Monitoring Tools

  • SharePoint Logging Spy: Check out this tool for watching the SharePoint logs in real-time. https://sharepointloggingspy.codeplex.com/

24. SharePoint Solution Installer
This utility was created to ease the task of installing SharePoint Solution files, which use the extension WSP, in a SharePoint environment. You would use this tool primarily to install custom solutions, and it operates very similarly to any standard installation process https://sharepointinstaller.codeplex.com/

25. AutoSPInstaller: Automated SharePoint 2010/2013 PowerShell-based installation script. https://autospinstaller.codeplex.com/

26. Visio Network Topology diagram Add-in for SharePoint https://visiospfarmaddin.codeplex.com/

27. Balsamiq Mockups:
An excellent tool to quickly create wireframes https://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups

28. .NET Reflector –  To view, navigate, and search through the class hierarchies of .NET assemblies. https://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/ . DotPeek and IL SPY would be the alternate. https://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/download/

29. Editors, Comparison Tools: Notepad++/UltraEdit, Beyond Compare/ UltraCompare

30. SMTP4Dev
A quick way to test E-mail functionality! Just start this program on any server and See it acting as SMTP Server: Download SMTP4Dev

Third-Party Products:

  1. Quest Control Point – https://www.quest.com/products/metalogix-controlpoint/
  2. Workflow Products: Nintex Workflows and K2 Workflow Suite
  3. SharePoint Migration Tools: Metalogix & ShareGate 
  4. RBS/EBS Tools: DocAve Storage Manager, Metalogix StoragePoint
  5. SharePoint Add-ons: KWizCom https://www.kwizcom.com/sharepoint-add-ons/ , Bamboo Solution SharePoint components

BTW, I haven’t included essential software for SharePoint such as SharePoint Designer, Visual Studio, Virtual Machine tools (VMWare/HyperV), InfoPath Designer, Version control software (TFS/SVN/CVS), etc.

Salaudeen Rajack

Salaudeen Rajack - Information Technology Expert with Two-decades of hands-on experience, specializing in SharePoint, PowerShell, Microsoft 365, and related products. He has held various positions including SharePoint Architect, Administrator, Developer and consultant, has helped many organizations to implement and optimize SharePoint solutions. Known for his deep technical expertise, He's passionate about sharing the knowledge and insights to help others, through the real-world articles!

14 thoughts on “My Favorite SharePoint Tools & Utilities – Top 50 List

  • do you have a similar list for sharePoint online?

    Reply
  • Salaudeen, Do you know of any tools that will allow saving Json code use to formatting columns and views? I have looked for something but I haven’t been successful, hoping you may know if anything like this exists out there. Thanks

    Reply
  • Wonderful site Salaudeen, so kind to be sharing. Jzk.

    Reply
  • Thanks for such a wonderful resource site, so kind sharing your knowledge. May you be blessed with more!

    Reply
  • This is a great resource! An an amazing blog!

    Reply
  • You should be a part of a contest for one
    of the greatest blogs on the web. I am going to highly recommend this site!

    Reply
  • Salaudeen, You have indeed compile all required tools for all SharePoint Admin/Devs and architect.. great list!

    Reply
  • Thank you very much, great list, the entire site is great.

    Reply
  • Many utilities for admin. Nice collection. Thanks for sharing it.

    Reply
  • i was looking for them for a long time, thanks for sharing.

    Reply
  • Brilliant list of tools, i was looking for them for a long time, thanks for sharing.

    https://www.sharepoint.inf4web.com

    Reply

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