How do I categorize files in SharePoint?

It’s no secret that it’s difficult to organize documents, photos, and other files. Most of us have this challenge with all of our digital assets and files. And really hard when collaborating with a team.

This is especially true on an organizational platform like SharePoint where you have the ability to create custom folders and sub-folders to organize your files in any way you want.

Yes, you can also use metadata to further categorize your files by name, date, or type of file (Excel Document, Word Document) but it’s time-consuming, and does it really help?

Let’s review the ins and outs of how you can categorize your files in SharePoint with some quick SharePoint organization tips on how to do it better than anyone else.

In SharePoint, you can manage and organize your files and data as your one-stop-shop. It’s like an informational hub where you can get information out to your employees or share documents and whatnot.

While it’s great for a holding area for all documents in your organization, it isn’t great for finding what you need, when you need it.

There are basically 4 methods to manage content in SharePoint. Let’s review these methods below:

1. Custom folders
2. Subfolders
3. Metadata
4. Custom navigation

Keep in mind if you’re managing a team that needs quick access to the right documents, you need to keep in mind how your organizational structure is going to map to their understanding of how to find everything. What might make sense to you, honestly, probably doesn’t always make sense to them 🙃

Create Custom Folders

One way to categorize your files is to create custom folders. You can create a folder for each type of file, or you can create a folder for each department in your company. You can also create a folder for each project that you are working on.

If you want to add a description to this folder, you have the ability to do so by clicking on the More Options button when you are in the folder’s properties and giving it a description. In this way, when someone is looking through the list of folders in SharePoint, they will see this description and know what type of files are in that folder.

Custom folders need to be given permissions, just like every other SharePoint file or page. If you want everyone to be able to access the files in this folder, give it the same permissions as the top-level site (or whichever level you created it in).

👉 More info on SharePoint folders

Organize your files using sub-folders

You can also organize your files using sub-folders. Sub-folders are a supplementary level of categorization that is nested within another folder. This is a great way to organize your files if you have a lot of folders in your document library.

To create a sub-folder, click on the New Folder button in the Files tab and enter the name of the folder. The folder will be created in the current location. You can move or copy files into your new folder from there.

If you want to add a description to this folder, you have the ability to do so by clicking on the More Options button when you are in the folder’s properties and giving it a description. In this way, when someone is looking through the list of folders in SharePoint, they will see this description and know what type of files are in that folder.

Use metadata to organize documents in SharePoint

You may also apply categorization with metadata – a fancy word for using data to describe other data. You may use metadata in SharePoint to identify the file name, date, or type of file.

To add metadata to a file, click on the Add Columns button in the Files tab. Select the type of metadata that you want to add and click OK. The metadata will be added to the file and will be displayed in the Details panel.

You can edit the metadata for a file by clicking on the Edit button in the Details panel. You can also delete the metadata by clicking on the Delete button.

There are several other types of metadata that you can add to files.

One way to categorize your files is by date. You may want to keep track of all the files for a particular month or project and how old they are. This type of metadata can be added multiple times to a file and will display the range of dates contained in the file.

If you want to add a keyword or category to your files, you can use keywords and categories. Keywords are searchable terms that users can apply to find certain types of files in SharePoint. Categories are used to group similarly themed items together. For example, if you have several folders for different projects, you can put one of the projects in the Miscellaneous category so that you can access all of these files quickly.

Although metadata can help you find your files, it does not affect how they are displayed in views or on your document library page. You may want to use folders for this type of categorization if you would like some control over how items are displayed in lists.

👉 More on metadata in Sharepoint

Use custom navigation to organize documents in SharePoint

You can use custom navigation to help you organize documents in SharePoint.

Custom navigation is a way to create a menu of links that will display the contents of a particular folder on your site. This is a great way to show your users the contents of a large folder or to give them easy access to all the files for a particular project.

Custom navigation can also be used to sort your findings by date, category, and other metadata types using the same process described for sorting documents and folders with keywords or categories.

In this way, you can add a description to each of your custom navigation items so that it describes the contents of the folder.

A solution designed for sales content management

While Sharepoint offers features that are highly configurable and enables your entire organizational structure, it makes sense to use a tool that works specifically and according to your sales process and requirements.

So What if you don’t use technology to enable your sales team?

Giving your sellers the tools they need is a game-changer for productivity.

Content Camel enables you to organize funnel-appropriate content within your dashboard and customize it to create a collaborative workflow. This robust organization helps you locate your files easily with the help of advanced search filters.

You can add unlimited custom labels/tags for each of your files and organize them into categories without generating copies. It saves you from the inevitable disaster of owning multiple copies of one file.

And what’s best is Content Camel integrates with all the major CRMs to make it a seamless experience. So you do not have to worry about juggling back and forth to locate a particular file.

Conclusion

So there you have it! 4 different methods to organize documents on Sharepoint. Hopefully, one of these methods will work well for you and make organizing your sales content a breeze.

However, if you’re looking for a better way to organize those files, make it easy to find the content you need, and give sales more tools to speed up the sales process, look no further than Content Camel.

We designed Content Camel specifically with marketing and sales in mind, so it’s perfect for managing all of your sales content. And if you’re not sure how to get started, sign up now for free to find out yourself how we are enabling marketers and sellers with the most advanced features for all teams large and small 👍