Forum Discussion
Editing Site Columns on Sub-Sites Doesn't modify the parent Site Column
When editing a site column on a document library or sub-site (by adding an additional choice for example) the change does not seem to get reflected up to the parent site column settings.
Is there a way to force the changes up to the parent?
If not, is there a way to limit editing of site columns to only on the top level?
This has always been an issue in SP, the fact the site columns created at the top of the collection are indistinguisable from those created at lower levels makes it very confusing. One thing you can do is create Content Types at the top level to bundle site columns together (or in the Content Type hub) and then train the subsite admins to use the CTs.
Dean_Gross yeah I keep running into the concept of Content Types everywhere I turn. I have read a lot about them but am struggling to figure out how to actually implement them in my situation. Do you know of any good tutorials?
I probably just need to try poking at it until I fumble my way to some sort of understanding - like I am with Site Columns. I think I have remade some of these columns 4 times now..... which means any views I made or metadata I applied is all worthless.
Take a look at https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Introduction-to-content-types-and-content-type-publishing-E1277A2E-A1E8-4473-9126-91A0647766E5?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US and https://collab365.community/understanding-content-type-hub-cth-in-sharepoint-2013/. The 2nd article shows how to set up a Content Type hub in SP 2013, but that is done for you in SPOnline so you can just focus on the first few sections of the article.
My strong recommendation is to start with something simple. Just create one CT and play around with it, it is very easy to get too elaborate too soon and this can cause a lot of pain and rework.
To my knowledge, changes made to a site column at a sub-site or application level are not intended to be passed upstream so as to preserve the integrity of SharePoint's administrative structure.
As for limiting the editing of site columns to only top site/source level, I do not believe there to be a configuration item in SharePoint Online to restrict the editing of site columns downstream; SharePoint treats site columns brought downstream more as templates that can be changed, although it does allow for configuration changes made at the site column's source to be passed downstream to any site or application using that column.
This is very disappointing.
I am worried about sub-site admins modifying site columns by adding or modifying "choices" to the list at a sub-site level. The system will quickly break down if every sub-site admin starts managing the company wide site columns at their sub-site levels.
The result will be every sub-site/document library having different choices on what are supposed to be company wide standard terms.
If you are concerned specifically about Choice columns, you might consider using a site column of type Lookup, instead. Place the lookup target list of choices at the top level and don't allow sub-site admins write access to it.
- Totally agree with Matt comments!
