Is a SharePoint List and Document library the same thing?

Question

I am trying to determine what the difference is between a SharePoint Document Library and a SharePoint List.

Since I am able to get the deltas for both, I am confused because they look somewhat similar.

The delta for a ListItem highlighted here seems to just be showing changes for a Document contentType

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/listitem-delta?view=graph-rest-beta&tabs=http

I was under the impression that a SharePoint List was just a list of items that contained text and images

For instance a Drive is a documentLibrary, but how can a list be a documentLibrary. You can also get Deltas for List and Drives that look somewhat similar but they're called different things.

I am really confused.

Answer 1

Hi @Adz,

A list contains items that are collections of fields/properties/columns. Optionally each item can have one or more attachments.

A library is a list, but but have one and exactly one file associated with each item. A library item also has fields/properties/columns.

Another way to say this is that a list item has a focus on "text" stored in fields/properties/columns, while a library has a focus on a single document.

When writing custom code, a list and a library look, and are processed the same, so both internally are "lists".  Both lists and libraries (generally) support common features such as Content Approval, Versioning, and Folders. Libraries alone support Check in and Check Out.

Here is a table of difference between list and library

Expand table

SharePoint List	Document Library
Can have more than one documents attached to the list item	Does not have document as an attachment instead it stores the document in library as an item
Only major version is supported	Major(Published) and minor(draft) versioning is supported
Do not support check-In/Check-Out feature	Supports check-In/Check-Out feature
Documents added as attachment are not included in Search index/result	Documents in library are included in search results
Attachment document in list item will not work with eDiscovery feature	Documents in library will work with eDiscovery feature
Cannot enable location based default value in list	Can enable location based default value in document library
Cannot have document set	Can have document set

You can refer to the nice article for more details

https://sharepointmaven.com/lists-vs-libraries-in-sharepoint-online/

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