Applies To: SharePoint 2010, CSS

I recently added a Wiki Pages Library to a site for some end users and they really like it. However, they had a seemingly straight forward request to hide the Recently Modified section that was showing up above the Quick Launch:

This may come up as a requirement when using some of the default templates that automatically include a Site Pages library or if a user adds a new page and is prompted to create the Site Pages library automatically.

I assumed there was a setting somewhere either for the library or the site in order to turn off this “feature”. Nope. Somebody decided that this was not only a feature everyone would want, but it was so great they put it in the left actions content place holder (PlaceHolderLeftActions) of the master page – which puts it on top of the quick launch.

Some quick searching turned up “solutions” that suggested setting the contentplaceholder’s visible property to false within the master page. This works; however, it also hides anything that uses that contentplaceholder such as some of the Blog tools. This makes it a very poor candidate for a farm wide branding solution.

The other option is to use some CSS (cascading style sheets). If you’re pushing this as part of a branding solution, just add this to one of your style sheets:

.s4-recentchanges{
	display:none;
}

That’s it. Microsoft provided a very handy class just for this section and some quick use of the CSS Display property takes care of it.

So what if this is just a one off thing – You aren’t currently using any custom branding or just want it to affect one site? For a single site you can use SharePoint Designer 2010 to open the master page (v4.master – choose edit in advanced mode). Then somewhere on the page add the following:

<style>
.s4-recentchanges{
	display:none;
}
</style>

If you just want to apply it page by page, you can put the style directly in the HTML of the page. Since this is a Wiki page, choose to edit the page (Under the Page Ribbon assuming you have the rights). Click anywhere on the page and choose the HTML drop down and pick Edit HTML Source:

Somewhere on the page add the following:

<style>
.s4-recentchanges{
	display:none;
}
</style>

You can also do this in a content editor web part using the same Edit HTML Source option.

If you don’t hide this thing, I would suggest editing the master page to at least move that contentplaceholder below the quicklaunch so your navigation doesn’t get all wonky or at least displaced by a relatively unused feature.