How do I programmatically disable (i.e. “grey out”) a custom action menu item?

Question

Obviously, this is something I need to do just in certain circumstances (determined by the current contents of a list).

The reason I want to keep the action visible is to set its description to say something like "Once you add new items, this action will be active again".

Thanks in advance Josh

Answer 1

It's far from the most elegant thing I've done, but it'll work for now.

The seed of the idea comes from this blog entry.

To make it work, I used a Content Editor webpart containing this jQuery snippet:

<script type="text/javascript">

$(document).ready(function(index){ 
   $("[text*='My Custom Action Text']").each(function() {
      $(this).attr('disabled', true);
      $(this).attr('onmenuclick', '');
   })
});

</script> 

In an IE-exclusive environment, the .disabled setting is sufficient to do exactly what's required. But it looks like the .disabled attribute isn't in the Firefox object model, so if it's necessary to make it function in the Firefox world, you also need the .onmenuclick line.

Firefox still doesn't grey out the item, but it renders the action null.

Answer 2

if you speak about a button in the Ribbon, the only way to enable/disable the button based on some rules is to defined in your CommandUIHandler the EnabledScript properties.

 <CommandUIHandlers>
     <CommandUIHandler
      Command="MyCommand"
      CommandAction="javascript:ProcessItems();"
      EnabledScript="javascript:EnableButton();"/>
 </CommandUIHandlers>

Answer 3

I would look at a couple of features that enabled / disabled your actions based on required criteria.

This link may be useful:

http://blogit.create.pt/blogs/andrevala/archive/2008/08/11/SharePoint-2007-Deployment_3A00_-Custom-Action-Features.aspx