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Microsoft SharePoint Blog
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SharePoint pages and image editing updates in Office 365

Mark-Kashman's avatar
Mark-Kashman
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Jan 09, 2018

At Ignite 2017, we announced the next wave of innovation coming to SharePoint pages to provide faster time to creation, enhanced control of text and images, increased promotion options, commenting and likes, and visibility on how your content is doing. You are in control of your message. Create it and get it out there to raise awareness and engagement throughout your company.

 

We’re pleased to share that the below features and updates are rolling out to Targeted Release Office 365 customers. Expect them to appear within the coming days and weeks. And soon, beyond Targeted Release, they release to the full production environment. You can track release progress on the public Office 365 Roadmap; note this link is filtered on “SharePoint” items.

 

Let’s dive into the details.

 

Start from existing page

Don’t start from blank! If you have a series of pages you’ve created with a similar layout and design, you can now go to an existing page and use it as a quick start to create a whole new page – but with a head start. From an existing page, click New and then select Start with a copy of this page. The service will create the new page, and you simply jump into updating with new text, images and content updates, with layout, design and common text already in place. And per user feedback, pages (and news) have an improved canvas experience when adding and managing multi-column sections – it is more discoverable where and how you add a new section or web part – with less overlap of “+” buttons.

From a page or news article, click New > "Copy of this page" to start from an existing page.

Make your text appear more like you like – rich text editing (RTE) updates

One of the most important aspects of any effective page or news article is the text. And setting the right context alongside the multimedia aspects you pull in. We’ve heard you loud and clear that you want to have a greater set of options to make your message stand out. Wish granted!

 

When you add a Text web part, the embedded rich text editor now gives you greater control for how your text appears. From the inline simple command bar, you can adjust size, bold, underline and spacing. And the real, new, magic of the Text web part lies behind the ellipses on the right side of the simple command bar. Clicking the ellipses opens a broader set of choices – showing all options in the edit pane, like font style, colors and highlights, indent, strikethrough, and the ability to create and manage tables. You, too, can add a link – which now has a page picker experience to add existing SharePoint content quickly.

You can add more color and emphasis to your text within a Text web part, including table creation and editing.

Learn more about adding text to your page with the Text web part.

 

Image web part now allows editing and photos from Bing

You can easily add an image to a SharePoint page or news article, and now when you do, you can further edit (crop/zoom) it inline to fit the needs of your page/news and layout. You can pull in an image from online (powered by Bing) that are tagged as Creative Common license to enhance your pages and news. Once your images are on the page, you can edit them in line with simple gestures like adjusting the ratio and cropping.

Within an Image web part, tap on the image to bring up a selection of inline image editing tools.

Learn more about using the Image web part.

 

Learn more about using web parts on pages and news; this article highlights all web parts that are in production for SharePoint in Office 365.

 

Further promote your pages and news

Beyond your core team, it’s important to then amplify and spread the word proactively about your important content. This is now a one-click action. From an existing page, click the Promote button and choose how you want to increase the reach and impact of your message. You can add a page (or news article) to the site navigation. Or post a page as news to have it automatically flow into the site’s home page, the SharePoint home news section and the SharePoint mobile app News tab. You can kick start an email to a person or group with a preview of the page and an optional message to your selected recipients. Or simply grab a link to the page. Note, the Post as News on this site button may be grayed out if the page you are wanting to promote is already a news article. Also, the first time you publish your page, you'll be prompted to help others find your page with the same promotion pane.

Clicking the Promote button at the top of the page (or news article) brings up the promotion pane to the right.

Learn more about adding a page to a site and promoting it.

 

Page usage Likes, Views, Comments

Once your information is out there, you want to know how it’s doing. Like the Site usage page – which gives site owners a view on how their users are interacting within the site, we introduce a similar view on information at the individual page and news article level.

 

At the bottom of each SharePoint page or news article you’ll see a row of information that tells you how many people have liked your content, how many left comments and total number of views. When you hover over the liked section, you’ll see a list of colleagues who like your ideas. And when you click on comments (and you left commenting on), you’ll jump right into the section at the bottom of the page to read feedback and engage with your audience. It, too, is now possible to click the like icon on an individual comment.

Page usage information (Likes, Views and Comments) appear at the bottom of each page or news article.

We are always open to feedback via UserVoice and continued dialog in the SharePoint community within the Microsoft Tech Community —and we always have an eye on tweets to @SharePoint. Let us know.

 

—Mark Kashman, senior product manager for the SharePoint team

 

Note: you can now view the full, corresponding Microsoft Ignite 2017 breakout sessions:

Updated Jan 30, 2018
Version 2.0
Product Updates
  • Colm Counihan's avatar
    Colm Counihan
    Iron Contributor
    Jan 28, 2019

    thanks Beth Hall and KevinCrossman .

     

    kudos Beth Hall on putting together that page documenting your test results and your thinking on this.

     

    I have a technical background , though not in design , so this was useful for me. As per your advice i'll probably need to run the tests myself to fully appreciate the full picture (pun intended :smileyhappy:)

     

    I think most SharePoint business users could struggle with grasping this OOTB functionality around Image management in SharePoint and could potentially stop them from using SharePoint as a Comms tool... Creating a newsletter in Word and/or Outlook and emailing it may seem a more attractive option. Or perhaps using Yammer or Teams , where the rollup/aggregation experience is functional but not as rich (but doesn't need to be either)

     

    Do competing products for OOTB Comm sites (I'm guessing WordPress could be one of these) have the same issues/gotchas in relation to simple image editing and responsiveness issues? 

     

    Does Microsoft envision investment in making the image editing experience within Modern sites more usable and easy to understand?

     

    Wondering do the SharePoint "Intranet in a box" products also suffer from this limitations. i.e. the inability to resize images within the page editor and the issues listed in Beth Hall 's article in relation to how images behave in responsive/adaptive scenarios.

     

    100% Agreed on the pointer to avoid using Text in the images. 

     

    Another tip to add to the list on http://straightenthemaze.com/2018/02/21/how-sharepoint-handles-images/ could be to avoid using pictures of people as images that will be displayed in any aggregation/roll-up web parts. What I've seen.. similar to how Text is handled , the aggregation/rollup may display people with their heads cropped out of the photograph which doesn't look good.

     

    Thankfully It's ok to have pictures with people within the contents of the page.

     

    [Update - 15022019] I've had a re-read of Beth's post (see URL above). I've distilled my experience with this to one recommendation. When working with images in SharePoint pages.  If the images are photographs taken on a smartphone then the (phone) photographer should be using landscape mode rather than portrait mode.

     

    Images that can be displayed in 16:9 aspect ratio (i.e. think of this as the display on a laptop or monitor) will behave/look well in the SharePoint page experience. Images that were taken in portrait mode do not behave/look well.

     

    There still is a question here in relation to how best to display a screenshot from a mobile app (e.g. the SharePoint App) as an image on a modern  SharePoint page.  This is where improved ability to resize the images would come in handy (similar to how we can resize the image in e.g. Outlook or Word - by dragging in the corners)

     

     

     

  • Beth Hall's avatar
    Beth Hall
    Iron Contributor
    Jan 25, 2019

    KevinCrossmanYes, you are correct, it focuses on web parts that display a page's thumbnails.

    You bring up a good point.  When I do update the article, I'll explore page content images as well.

     

  • KevinCrossman's avatar
    KevinCrossman
    MVP
    Jan 25, 2019

    Beth Hall That article is interesting as it relates to the image that's used for News Page thumbnails. I was referring to image placed onto the page using the Image Web Part (e.g. images that aren't part of the header)

  • Beth Hall's avatar
    Beth Hall
    Iron Contributor
    Jan 25, 2019

    Colm Counihan KevinCrossman 

    Prior to the in-system image editing features being introduced, SharePoint's preferred image dimension was 16:9.  Proportions other than that were scaled or had white space added to get them to 16:9. 

    The behavior was inconsistent based on the web part type, web part display view, column scale and page scale.  The image proportions that were distorted the most were square.  The more you deviated from the 16:9 proportion, the worse the distortion got.

    I wrote a very detailed blog article that includes examples, which may be helpful.  It includes a handful of high-level "Rules" to keep images looking good.

    While I haven't explored the impact of the new in-system editing functionality in depth, my assumption is that regardless of where an image is edited (in-system or prior to uploading) the display behavior will be the same.

    At some point when I have some time, I'll dive into a full exploration using the in-system editing features and update the article.  In the mean-time, I hope this info helps.

    Cheers

  • KevinCrossman's avatar
    KevinCrossman
    MVP
    Jan 25, 2019

    Agree that lack of resizing, like Wiki pages have, is definitely a pain point.  Now that it's been pointed out, I do find it odd that cropping and aspect ratio changing are available, but resizing isn't.

  • Colm Counihan's avatar
    Colm Counihan
    Iron Contributor
    Jan 25, 2019

    I'd like to be able to do simple resizing of the images within the page editor. 

     

    I've taken screenshots from my mobile , I uploaded them to OneDrive, copied them to SharePoint and then added them to the page. The images on the displayed on the page actually are are actually larger (considerably) than my mobile handset. 

     

    I'm working on a 15inch laptop , and the primary experience for the page will be that which is displayed on a device with a similar screen size. however the mobile screenshot does not appear entirely on one screen. It scrolls across 1.5 pages at least. 

     

    I'd like to have more control over how the images display on the page. i seem to be able to crop the image but that is not what I want to do for a screenshot.

    The aspect ratio options don't seem to be working for me either. 

     

    Any suggestions ? or do I need to shrink the original screenshot images outside of SharePoint before adding them to a page. I note that when I open the images in "photos" the image display is about 70% of the size when I add it to the SharePoint page. So part of my issue is that SharePoint is deciding to enlarge the images.

     

    Perhaps this is because i am selecting to display the image in a single section.. and this relates to "sections" on the page rather than the images.. However it doesn't make sense to me to arrange the page in a different way other than:

    1) text about the image to follow

    2)image

    3) text about the next image to follow etc.

     

    The phrase "a picture tells a thousand words" could be appropriate here..  If I select a 2 column  design with the image and the text, i end up with the image and then a small amount of text in the column alongside. The text column has way too much whitespace.. because the picture is telling the "1000 words" i don't need to supply the text that would fill the column alongside the article.

     

    [edit] I see there is a user voice for this already .. https://sharepoint.uservoice.com/forums/329214-sites-and-collaboration/suggestions/20390116-ability-to-resize-images-on-modern-pages

     

  • Yuri Deglin's avatar
    Yuri Deglin
    Iron Contributor
    Apr 16, 2018

    Debjani Mitra ,  please disregard my post - the issue is no longer there.  Perhaps I caught it in  bad time :-( 

     

    I will edit my previous post - to remove the false alarm about a bug. 

     

  • Yuri Deglin's avatar
    Yuri Deglin
    Iron Contributor
    Apr 13, 2018

    Social bar has been deployed to our tenant. Everything works great. 

    The only suggestion I have: It wold be great if the icons on the social bar would have pop-up explanations ( i.e. with mouse over) . For example I was bombarded with question about Views as to what period it covers. So pop-up could just explain the meaning of the icons.