In a previous post, I explained how to import a Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) Dashboard Web Part (DWP) directly onto your Web Part Page, import a DWP into the Site Gallery, or copy a DWP into the Virtual Server Gallery on the Web Servers. But I neglected to explain how to export a Web Part to a DWP file.
Choose a Web Part that you would like to export (I just dropped an empty Content Editor Web Part onto the page) and choose Export... from it's smart menu:
Choose the Save button from the File Download dialog:
I like to strip out the spaces in the file name and save all my DWPs in a directory called DWP directly off the root of my c: drive:
Make no mistake, the Web Part's assembly is not included in this export, just a reference to the Web Part's assembly, the named value pairs associated with the 21 built-in properties, and any custom public properties that the Web Part's class has exposed. If you look at the saved DWP file in Notepad, you will see that it simply references the assembly, namespace, and class of the Web Part that is installed on your server and optionally assigns initial values to properties that will be populated when the Web Part is once again placed on a Web Part Page:
This exported DWP can be imported back into a gallery or a page as it is or the XML can be modified so that different default values are used when the Web Part is placed onto a Web Part Page.
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