Now i am writing my 3rd post about organizing documents in SharePoint. This post will cover the possibility of using folders in a SharePoint document library and adding metadata to these folders.
Post serie overview:
Part I – Best Practice I: Organize documents in SharePoint
Part II – Best Practice II: Organize documents in SharePoint
Part III – Best Practice III: Organize documents in SharePoint
Normally, the standard folder in a document library only provides a column for the title, but with a small trick you can also add some more columns to categorize folders. It might be useful if you have lots of folders and want to filter the list of folders for some reasons.
I do not want to raise a discussion about using folders or not. That is covered by part II. But it might be helpful to use a hybrid version: Folders with metadata.
How we can achieve this solution:
1) Creating a folder content type
Go to you Site Collection Settings into the Site Content Type Gallery and create a new one.
Call it “FolderPlus” and after choosing Folder Content Types at the dropdown for Select parent content type from, you have to set the parent content type to Folder. Ok.
2) Prepare the document library
In your document library go to document library settings and choose advanced settings. There you’ll find a radio button to allow management of content types. Click yes and save it.
Now you can add content type from existing site content types: There you can choose the one we created in step one.
3) Create columns and add it to the folder content type
Now you can create columns in the document library settings. After you’re done you have to assign them to the FolderPlus content type. Therefore click on the FolderPlus below content types and click on add columns. Now you are defining which columns you want to assign to the FolderPlus content type.
4) Solution works
Now you are done:
Existing Folders in a document library:
If you want to assign existing folders also to this content type it is quite easy. Just open the folder in edit mode. There you can change the content type for the existing folders.
I have a little homework for you: Try to find out the differences to a document set in SharePoint 2010 – Any ideas?
..:: I LIKE SHAREPOINT ::..
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