How to Emulate Network Shares in a SharePoint Document Library

Here’s a 15 minutes screencast I’ve created showing you
Here’s a 15 minutes screencast I’ve created showing you how you can emulate the experience of navigating through a network share hierarchy WITHOUT creating sub-folders ina document library. Enjoy!

8 Comments

    Hi there, this is great! I am thinking of doing something like this at work and this will help no end. Question: we have quite a few Word templates which were created using VBA, I have been doing some testing with a SharePoint document library and content types but the templates don’t seem to work properly because of the macros contained within the templates – any ideas how I can get this to work? Is it a group policy setting or more SharePoint-related? Thanks again – Nicola

    Hi Dux,
    This was very much informative, thanks alot!

    I had tried a similar approach for creating a FAQ page in MOSS 2007 using Custom Lists. I was inspired by the FAQ page MS have in their partner SDPS site. But I could not get the exact look, I believe they are using Data View webpart or something. May be you could take a look at that FAQ page.

    In this emulation is it possible to remove the column name in grouping so that users see just the name.

    Dux,

    Great guide on “How to Emulate Network Shares in a SharePoint Document Library”. My customers are asking for this type of document presentation all the time. It’s difficult to reset expectations since many have used Microsoft for so long. This gives them a great alterrnative. Simple logic but sometimes the obvious eludes us. Down in the weeds so much that we can’t see the forest for the trees if you know what I mean 🙂 I have set this up several times now and the recipients easily embraced it easily.

    Thanks again,
    Terri H.

    Thanks for sharing this, to be more efficient. I have 3 questions:?
    1- Can security be implemented with Views for your leveles?
    2- Is better to use Content Type or Metadata?
    3- Do you have a demo for content type and what it is please

    I’m not sure this is the place for this or not, but I’m a little confused and am running out of places to turn. For some reason I have it in my head that folders are not my friend and that metadata is the way to go. Then along comes comments like the following from ‘Plan for software boundaries’ whitepaper that make it seem as if folders are necessary.

    “You can create very large document libraries by nesting folders, using standard views and site hierarchy.”

    So if I want a VLDL then I have to use folders? Why can’t I use a flat document library and control the number of items that come back in the view? Isn’t that what this is really all about? Ensuring optimal performance by not exceeding that seemingly magical limit of 2000 items per view?

    On the otherside of the coin, are there valid needs/uses for folders? If folders are required, how can they be used effectively?

    Again, I’m sorry if this isn’t the place for these comments. If you have any suggestions, links to guidance, whatever – I would greatly appreciate it.

    Kind Regards,

    Ryan

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