Thumbnail in modern highlighted content web part

Brass Contributor

Hello,

 

I am using the highlighted content web part to roll up news pages. It all works just fine except for the thumbnail photo which has a somewhat odd behaviour.

 

Can anyone tell how it is supposed to work? It feels like a thumbnail randomizer.

 

Sometimes it takes the first photo in the post and sometimes not. I can't find any relevant information on how it is supposed to work and that is quite frustrating. It's even more frustrating for my publishers as they never know what it will look like in the news roll up on the front page.

 

It's all modern communication sites on SharePoint Online. 

6 Replies
There is no documentation on how exactly it works, but it uses the first image when there is no banner image used. The news web part works better than using Highlighted content web part as it will use the focal point on the banner if you use it but it's still just best that i've found is making sure you have a "rectangle" shape to use for your news if you really need it to show up correctly.

Also if your on Targeted Release, you might find it a better experience using news webpart and now changing the "Source" option to rollup news by selecting multiple sites possibly. Not sure how many you have, that or creating a hub, it's been a much better experience than using Highlighted content, which I used to use for news rollup as well.

Thanks Christopher,

 

I will look into this and test the news web part as well.

 

/Magnus

@Magnus Göransson I am having somewhat of the same issue. I am trying to use the highlighted content web part, but I have it attached to a document library. the thumbnail is top of the first page. Heard of anyway to add a custom thumbnail to a document for this web part?

 

Thanks!

You can only set a custom thumbnail are part of Site Pages.

@Mike_M518 I am having the exact same issue - I want to roll up recently added PDFs but the auto-generated preview is ugly. I want to be able to add a custom thumbnail. Have you found any answer to this?

Also problem when the page is site homepage: It does not matter that you have set the thumbnail photo for homepage, there is no photo shown in highlighted content web part for that homepage.