Forum Discussion
What SharePoint library columns might be recognized as columns (details/fields) in File Explorer?
Bear in mind, I'm no expert...
What SharePoint library columns might be recognized as columns (details/fields) in File Explorer for Windows 10? I've found that if I set up a Single Line of Text co...
I have almost the same question, however I did not find the answer here.
My collegues would like to start using metadata but also want to synchronize the document library they work with on a regular basis with their PC (in case Internet does not work when they want to access a document).
Unfortunately, none of the metadata colums we add seem to be available in the explorer, which makes it kind of difficult to find documents in long lists.
What am I missing?
I add a printscreen (example) of what we see in both situations.
There is nothing you are missing.
In short:
- SharePoint additional columns are mapped to document properties for Office files and hence are visible locally in the backstage of the Office application when the synced file is opened.
- SharePoint additional columns are, in general, NOT mapped to document properties for non-Office files (e.g. PDFs). In the article that I referenced in a previous post in this thread are listed the file types for which additional properties could be actually mapped. Again, not PDFs.
- In any case, additional properties are not visible as columns in File Explorer.
Hope it helps...
Thanks, not the answer I was looking for but still, your answer is OK. I thought I as much.
I just wonder how I will convince my colleagues, who are huge fans of maps on a fileshare to organize their documents, to use document libraries instead of folders with this. But I will give it a try.
one approach is to consider the metadata values as compliments to folders. Show them how they have one hierarchy with folders, but once they add metadata they get many more options. But just like every other system, not every option is available in every scenario.
Keep in mind that custom views are not visible in Windows Explorer either, once they get used to how powerful Views are, then they will not feel the need to using Windows Explorer, the transition can actually happen very quickly.
How often do they really need to work offline? If it is frequently, then a well designed library and folder structure will be more important than it if just an occasional need.
To continue this conversation. Apparently, they need to upload documents/files to another application created for us (read website).
Files cannot be uploaded directly from the Sharepoint library, only from explorer (thus Sharepoint synced to explorer). So we will need to rethink this.
