Modifying file contents without creating a new version

Question

I have a job that runs every five minutes and puts some information to the footer of the Word documents. Versioning is enabled on the list so whenever the job runs, a new version is created for every document.

Is there a way to modify the documents without creating new versions every time?

Currently, I am reading the file contents with SPFile.OpenBinary(), modifying the stream, then putting the file back with file.ParentFolder.Files.Add(fileName, stream).

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You can call SystemUpdate(false) method to update the item without incrementing the version number. More information here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.splistitem.systemupdate.aspx

Answer 2

All of your posts helped me build a solution.

We are using the Client Object Model (COM) and cannot refer to SharePoint.dll which has the SPList object. In our given scope of COM, I could accomplish it by doing this in the C# code.

1. Load the File and check out

           clientContext.Load(file);
           file.CheckOut(); // Check out the File
           clientContext.ExecuteQuery();
   

2. Update our file properties as follows:

           file.ListItemAllFields["Owner"] = "Owner Name";
           file.ListItemAllFields["Field"] = "Value";
   

3. Finally Update the List Item and Check in the file as shown below

           file.ListItemAllFields.Update(); // Update the Properties
           // Checkin the file with Overwrite to maintain the version
           file.CheckIn(string.Empty, CheckinType.OverwriteCheckIn); 
           clientContext.ExecuteQuery();
   

Hope this helps some one.

Answer 3

If you don't want to keep the version, it seems you no longer need the unmodified file. You can delete(SPFileCollection.Delete) the file and add the modified one after that.