Content Types In SharePoint Online

Many times, I have heard about people facing confusion understanding what exact content types are in SharePoint Online and how it's different from the column fields created in SharePoint lists & libraries.

So, this article is for you to clear all your confusion in terms of Content types.

What are Content Types?

Let’s begin first by knowing What are Content Types?

• Content types comprise a set of columns that serves the same purpose.
• So, for say, you have multiple Asset Management scenario-based lists in your intranet site,
• To avoid the creation of duplicate column fields for the Asset-based lists, Content types come to the rescue wherein you create an Asset Content-Type in which you can create specific asset-based columns.
• Then all you must do is Add Asset Content type to all the Asset lists and this way all the asset-related columns will be added to all your Asset lists wherever you will wish to add.
• In the end, using content type you can use the same set of columns and add it to your lists or libraries

Create a new content type in SharePoint Online and add it to SharePoint List

Enough of theory, let’s check how you can create a new content type in SharePoint Online and add it to your SharePoint List.

Navigate to your SharePoint Site and click on Site Settings as shown in Fig 1.1.

Select the Site Content types as shown in Fig 1.2.

In the Site content types page, you will notice that all the content types are grouped together under a parent like Custom Content-Type, Document Custom Type, List Content-Type, etc. Also, you can an option to create a content type as shown in Fig 1.3.

Once you click on create you will see a form screen something like in Fig 1.4.

As shown on the form page, give a valid Content-Type name and description based on your scenario. You will also notice the dropdown for Parent Content-Type as shown in Fig 1.5.

You need to choose Parent CTs wisely according to your requirement like where you want to add your Content type, to your List, or to your library and accordingly choose from the dropdown. In Fig 1.5 I have chosen List Content-Type so based on that I will choose Item as my Parent Content-Type in the below dropdown as shown in Fig 1.6.

In the end, select a group where you want your created content type to be visible on the SharePoint Content Types page as seen in Fig 1.3. Click on Ok to save the newly created CT as shown in Fig 1.7.

After clicking on OK, your newly created Content Type page will look something like this as shown in Fig 1.8. Here the only title is the default column field added you can also hide this title field or keep it as is. Let’s add few columns for Asset Type and Asset ID as well.

By clicking on Add from the new site column as shown in Fig 1.9 we will add two new single lines of text column fields named Asset Type & Asset ID, after adding fields your Content-Type will look as shown in Fig 1.10.

Now it’s time to add this Content-Type to your SharePoint Online List. Navigate to your SharePoint Online List and click on List Settings -> Advanced Settings.-> Allow management of content Types –Select Yes -> Click Ok as shown in Fig 1.11.

Now it’s time to refresh your SharePoint List and you will see the Content-type columns added to your SharePoint List.

I hope you enjoyed learning all about SharePoint Online Content Types, how to create and how you can use them in your SharePoint Online Lists and Libraries.

Stay tuned for more such content! Keep Learning and Keep Sharing.