How to prevent MS Word from asking for SharePoint Content Type on Save As (in SharePoint Online env)

Question

We have a scenario where users interact with SharePoint Online libraries that have at minimum 2 content types -- the default Document type and a second custom type. This is because initially users should be allowed to upload content without needing to provide any metadata and then, at a later time, as part of archiving the user would change the content type to the custom type and then provide the required metadata to support archiving.

In a related use case (same library), users may need to take an existing document, open it in Word, and then use it as a template to create a new document using the Save As/Save a Copy functionality. In this case we ALWAYS want the document to be saved back to SharePoint using the 'Document' content type. However, when doing a Save As/Save a Copy from Word, the user is ALWAYS prompted to select a content type, with the default value being set to the content type of the original document in SharePoint. While the user can change the type to be 'Document', this is prone to users simply clicking OK, which would save the document using the original content type and not the desired 'Document' content type.

In SP 2010, 2016, and 2019, it was possible to set the list property 'ForceDefaultContentType' to true and with this MS Word DID NOT prompt the user to select a content type -- it automatically defaulted to whatever the default content type in the library was (in our case Document). However, it looks like this property is no longer available in SP Online.

Anyone know if there is another way to implement the functionality offered by ForceDefaultContentType using a SP Online list/library? Basically to prevent Word from asking the user to select a content type and defaulting to the default type defined in the library...

Thanks

Answer 1

@Rene Wagner I could reproduce this issue as you mentioned using SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online.

When using SharePoint 2013, by default, when I used "save as" to save the existing file as a copy to the library, it would ask to choose which content type was used like the below:

If I used the following cmdlets code to set ForceDefaultContentType to true on my SharePoint 2013, when doing the same action, it could save the file into SharePoint without asking me to choose content type.

$web = Get-SPWeb -Identity http://SP13  
$list = $web.GetList("/Doc219")  
$list.ForceDefaultContentType = $true  
$list.Update()  

I tried to use the following PnP PowerShell cmdlts to set the default content type on SharePoint Online, then test again, however, the result is same.

#Set Variables  
$SiteURL = "https://xxx.sharepoint.com/sites/xxx"  
$ListName = "Doc0502"  
$ContentTypeName = "Document"  
   
#Connect to PnP Online  
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $SiteURL -Credentials (Get-Credential)  
   
#Set Default Content Type of the List  
Set-PnPDefaultContentTypeToList -List $ListName -ContentType $ContentTypeName  

Per my test and research, the ForceDefaultContentType Property is only available for SharePoint server, currently, there is no similar property for SharePoint Online.

For this issue, we suggest you submit a user voice for it.

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