Examining the Tools in an Announcements List

Figure 19.27 shows an Announcements list in SharePoint Foundation 2010 with an item selected in it, and the Items tab on the List Tools Ribbon visible. These tools should all look familiar, and were covered in the earlier walk through for a library. Because this is housed in a SharePoint Foundation 2010 site collection, the I Like It and Tags & Notes tools are not included, but would be if the list were housed in SharePoint Server 2010 Standard or Enterprise.

Figure 19.27. Items tab for an Announcements list.

One new tool offered in the list is the Attach File tool, which allows the user to browse for a single file and then save it as an attachment. Attachments are saved in the Attachments folder within the list, and although there is no published limit to the number of attachments that can be added to a list item, there are few benefits to storing documents in this manner, as discussed earlier in this section.

The process of creating a new item in the list is simpler than in a library, and the user just needs to click the New Item icon, and then add content to the fields, as shown in Figure 19.28. For this example, an image was also included, which was uploaded from the user’s Pictures folder, and SharePoint allows the user to simultaneously choose the picture to use and also to upload it to a desired library on the site. Although this might not sound groundbreaking, in SharePoint 2007, the process for including images in rich text required that the image first be uploaded, the URL for the image copied, and then the picture placeholder used in the content (a much more laborious process). The text formatting tools can be seen, which have also improved since SharePoint 2007, and the graphic image can be resized from within the AJAX editing window. These tools make it very simple and quick for users to create quite intricate postings. After the Save button is clicked, the content is saved to the list.

Figure 19.28. Creating a new announcement in a list.

As with a library, an item in a list can be checked as active, and then the relevant tools become active. Figure 19.29 shows the List tab of the List Tools Ribbon, as a list administrator will need to become familiar with these tools to fully realize the potential of lists. A valuable set of tools is revealed in the next section, which covers the Datasheet view from a high level, and to round out this chapter, the Create View and Add a Column tools are demonstrated and discussed.

Figure 19.29. The List tab for an Announcements list.