Now that nearly 200 of you have come through SharePoint training and have gone on to manage your own SharePoint sites, your document libraries are probably bursting at the seams with documents and folders. One tool we look at in SharePoint 2: Site Creation Basics training is the ability to create columns to help organize site files. If you liked learning about columns, you will love content types!
Content types will give you the ability, among other things, to apply columns to specific files, and effectively filter by files with similar column structures.
Check out the video below, with examples and instructions for building your own content types.
Video: Content Types
If the screen is too small to view embedded, click on the video title to open in a new screen.
Written Instructions
You just saw content types in action, so here are the steps I took in the video in written form.
Create a Content Type
The first step is to create your content type(s).
1. Go to Site Contents > Site Settings
2. Select Content Types under Web Designer Galleries. Note that this may appear on the left side of the screen in the case of Communications sites.
3. Select Create Content Type.
4. Name your content type. If the name is already in use in columns on your site, you will be prompted to pick a different name.
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- For Parent Category, select Document Content Types.
- For Content Type, select Document.
5. Select Add Site column and add as many columns as you would like. The column types and options are the same that you see when we added columns to a site library in SharePoint 2 training.
Add Content Type to a Site Library
Your content type is created, so now you can add it to any of your site document libraries.
- Go to your document library and select Add Column. Scroll down and select Add a content type
2. Select your custom content type.
Assign a Content Type to Documents in the Library
At this point, the content type has been created and applied to a library. Now it is available to add to specific files.
- Select any files to which you would like to apply the new content type. Go to Details (“i” in the upper right).
2. Under Content Type, select your custom content type.
3. Review the pane for your columns, and press Save.
Add Desired Data to New Columns
Just like any other columns, you will need to fill in the values for the custom content fields. Having labeled your documents as their new content types, you can go to the details of each file and fill in the custom columns, even though these columns are not readily in view.
Select each file that has the custom content type applied and go to details (“i” in the upper right). Complete any desired fields. In my case, there were two new fields: a person field and a yes/no field.
Filter by Content Type to See Columns
Now that your content types have been created, applied to a library, and applied to specific documents, you can filter by a content type to view the custom columns.
In the upper right view settings, go to All Documents and find your custom content type fields in the list.
Your custom columns with any completed data will appear. To go back to the previous view, click on the same dropdown menu and select All Documents.
Wrapping Up and More Resources
Well, what do you think? I hope this was a helpful trick as you are organizing your SharePoint document libraries! This is a somewhat advanced look at SharePoint organization, so if you are unfamiliar with SharePoint, this may sound a little confusing. If so, here are some more resources for you.
Resources from ITS
ITS has two SharePoint training offerings available:
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- SharePoint 1: Foundations
- SharePoint 2: Site Creation Basics
Visit myTraining to view the training schedule, sign up for SharePoint sessions and look for other Microsoft Cloud sessions, like OneDrive and Teams.
Resources from Microsoft
Here is some information about content types from Microsoft: