SharePoint and QuickLunch

A quick post on how to modify the appearance of the QuickLaunch bar in SharePoint (WSS v3, SharePoint Server 2007)
One of the most common questions I am asked when demonstrating SharePoint to customers is how to modify the Quick Launch navigation bar. In particular, people want to remove the 'View All Site Content' option to prevent users from seeing the underlying site structure. See screenshot below:

If you wanted to remove 'View All Site Content' from all sites and pages, you would need to modify the underlying templates being used to build the navigation. But if you just want to remove the option from a single site or page, there is a quick and easy method using SharePoint Designer 2007.

1. Within the SharePoint site, click on the Site Actions button in the top-right corner of the page (see screenshot above).
2. Under Galleries, click on Master Pages (Master Pages are page templates that contain elements common to the site)
3. In the Master Pages Gallery, hover over the default.master page and click the arrow to display its Edit menu (see screenshot below)
4. Select Edit in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer (SharePoint Dersigner will open with the default.master page displayed)
5. Click on the 'View All Site Content' placeholder. In the Tag Properties, under group Behaviour, select the 'Visible' property and change it from True to False (see screenshot below)
6. Click 'Save' to save the default.master page template.
7. Refresh the site in your browser and the Quick Launch navigation bar should no longer show the option to 'View All Site Content' (see screenshot below)

Naturally, if you are working with live deployments of SharePoint, make sure you test any changes and are happy with the results before applying them to the production environment.
[Update: 28 August 2007] Please check the Comments section for a simple alternative method that does not require SharePoint Designer (i.e. just Notepad will do). Many thanks to Ulrich for sharing.