How to go about transitioning from a Folders to Metadata structure on SharePoint?

Question

I'm currently trying to improve my team's SharePoint by transitioning our data management structure from folders to metadata.

My team has one SharePoint library with multiple folders, which contain a number of very different documents (files, images, videos, etc.). Adding list columns works fine when working within one folder, but I end up having many irrelevant columns for all the contents in the other folders. For instance, let's say my images need 6 columns (metadata), while some files only need 3--the files will still have 6 empty columns if they share the same library. Does that mean I need to build new libraries for each "folders"?

I did try to set up different "views", but it seems like more work for users than just going through folders.

I also explored "content types", which are way more complicated than it seems, and from what I understand, they work on a library level anyway, so you still end up with irrelevant columns for much of your documents.

I haven't been able to actually see an example of a metadata-structured library with multiple different sets of documents (and metadata attached to them), and I'm really curious to know what that experience is and look like.

I would really appreciate any help or guidance. Thanks so much

Answer 1

Hi @Juliet,

You cannot create columns at file / folder level. Columns can be created at document library level or content type level.

You could consider following solutions

1. Create separate document libraries for different type of documents (teams/groups) to have different metadata / columns
2. Create separate content types for each team/group (inheriting document content type) >> add different columns to each content type as per your requirements >> add content types to same document library >> use custom content types to create documents.

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.