Sharepoint 2010 uses the feature rich ribbon, similar to what was introduced in the Microsoft Office 2007 suite. This ribbon provides users with many capabilities, such as text editing and content publishing. Among these features is the ability to change the format of a rich text control, adding headers, footers and columns.
When designing a publishing site, I had hoped to make use of this neat feature to keep Page Layout designs simple and easy to update for content contributors. However, when designing the publishing site, I noticed that I was unable to make use of this feature of the ribbon, as it was always disabled.
Researching the problem, I was having a hard time finding out why this button was disabled. I checked security settings and the control properties in my Page Layout aspx file, nothing seemed to solve this dilemna.
It turned out, after asking on a Sharepoint forum, that the Text Layout feature is only available for wiki sites. The Publishing Portal and Enterprise Wiki are built off of the publishing framework, which replaces the Text Layout button with the Page Layout button.
So custom layouts will have to be design specifically at the Page Layout. If a layout requires 3 columns of data, then a Page Layout has to be created that allows 3 columns of data. Lesson learned, I am providing this as a tip for anyone else having a hard time figuring out why they can’t use the Text Layout button in their Publishing site.
