Sharepoint Image Library and Datasheet view

Is it called Picture Library or Image Library? I never remember. Well nevermind.

There are a lot of YASQs that relates to consitency. I've been caught in a trap frequently by customers because I've assumed that functionality in one place is also available in the next in Sharepoint. Today it was the "Edit in Datasheet" button that came into play.

The customer was organizing pictures in folders in a Picture Library (or was it Image Library?) and found pictures hard to categorize. The built in Slideshow feature did not seem to work very well with the folders, nor with other views. The slideshow feature will always display the entire contents of the picture library and does not pay respect to neither views (filters) nor folders, even though the link is displayed in the context of a view or a folder.

I initially recommended to discard the use of folders and use metadata columns instead. This allows for more advanced categorization of data than the hierarchical folder structure. In fact I recommend never making folders inside a document library, because sooner or later people are going to copy a document into several folders in order to "tag" it with the appropriate context information.

In fact they should "folder-enable" columns to auto-generate views grouped by the column instead of having folders at all.

Well, so we're moving all the files out of the folders and tagging them with metadata instead. That's a perfect task for the DataSheet View; just open the folder, switch to datasheet view, set the value in the first row (likely the folder name) and finally drag the Excell cell-copy-thingy downwards to apply the value to all rows.

There is no Datasheet view on the Image Library. This also implies that there is no easy way to apply metadata after you upload a batch of pictures (which you normally do). I tried applying all my FrontPage Magic by inserting the toolbar-button from a regular Document Library and re-wiring the List guids and all that stuff. Looked good, felt bad. No errors, but no datasheet view either.

My initial guess is that the Image library, much like the Form Library are "same, same but different" and that the regular rules don't not apply. If someone out there got this thing working please write about it, because noone else has. Otherwise; at least you don't have to spend a couple of hours deschiffring sharepoint ListViewXml as I just did (again).

11 Comments

  • Using metadata + views is also correct for "tagging" (categorizing/classifying) according to Information Architecture and the LATCH method for structuring the information space: location, alphabetic, time-based, category, hierarchy (ranking). Folders are not. Lets hope that the synapses of our customers are not forever burnt on folders.

  • What would have been perfect was to have a web-part with a treeview panel that would show listing metadata according to their hierarchy/ranking, and when clicking a node in the treeview, all list items having that metadata value (or value set) would be listed in a details panel.



    This would give the users their beloved "folders". Two web-parts could also be used. The filtered list could then be just a customized filtered doc-lib view related to a node's metadata value set.



    Note that I have not thought of how to get SharePoint metadata values to be hierarchical, but this can surely be solved somehow. Maybe some of the treeview web-parts out there can be used ?

  • The lack of a datasheet view in MOSS image libraries is annoying. I've been using a tool called DockIT (Vyapin Software) which allows me to do bulk picture imports and supply a spreadsheet or CSV to use to populate the metadata fields.

  • I am looking for a solution to using the slide show with a view. Has anyone been able to figure this out OOTB?

  • dying for an OOB solution too...

  • You can create an access view in a picture library and use this to quickly tag pictures instead of the datasheet view.

  • You can create a new view in a Photo Library, then once you are in the view, where you select the columns and such, go all the way to the bottom and look for the Style section. Choose Basic table and it will give you the view you want and can put into Datasheet View

  • Les, how exactly do you put this into datasheet view, I cannot get this functionality

  • @Alana : yes, but that Access View requires Microsoft Access in order to manipulate the data/columns and doesn't allow for in-browser batch editing like the Datasheet view does.

    @Les : I had a view (with grouping) in a picture library, changed the "Style" to "Basic table" but I still don't see the "Edit in Datasheet" option on the Actions drop down.

  • I have the same problem... how did you succeeded in it?
    How can icreate an access view?

  • Has anyone come across a non-access way to use a datasheet style view for bulk editing of meta data within a photo library?

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