Working with Metadata in a Word 2010 Document and Document Libraries

The following section and step-by-step exercises provide a thought-provoking introduction to the functionality of metadata in SharePoint 2010 and the interaction of SharePoint with the embedded metadata in a Word 2010 document. By following these steps, an administrator will gain a better understanding of the interaction between SharePoint 2010 document libraries and the documents that will be stored in them, and will probably want to perform additional testing to further master the topic.

This exercise walks an administrator through the process of creating two different document libraries that contain different metadata columns, and the process of accessing the properties for a Word 2010 document, populating metadata within the document, and then uploading the document and adding additional metadata. The document is then moved to the second document library, where some of the metadata appears to be lost, but is in fact still contained within the Word document.

The following steps cover the actions needed to complete the exercise:

1. Create a new document library on a SharePoint 2010 site. Leave the settings at their defaults. Title it Metadata Test1. Steps for creating a new document library are provided in Chapter 20, “Customizing and Managing Libraries and Lists to Meet Business Requirements,” in the “Creating Lists and Libraries” section.
2. Click the Library tab, and click the Create Column icon.
3. Name the column Subject, and choose Single Line of Text, and leave the rest of the settings at their defaults and click OK.
4. Click the Library tab, and click the Create Column icon again.
5. This time, name the column Project Name, and choose Choice (menu to choose from) as the column type. In the Type Each Choice on a Separate Line box, delete the default entries and add Project ABC, Project DEF, and Project GHI, as shown in Figure 22.1. Clear the Default Value field, leave the other fields at their defaults, and click OK.

   Figure 22.1. Creating a choice column.

   

6. Create a second document library, but title it Metadata Test 2, and add the column titled Subject to it, as well, but do not add the Project Name column.
7. Next, create a new Word 2010 document and enter some sample text.
8. Click the File tab, click the Info link on the left side, and then click the Properties drop-down menu on the right side and select Show Document Panel.
9. The Document Panel will now appear for the document. Enter a value into the Subject field (for example, Mission Statement), and the results will look like Figure 22.2.

   Figure 22.2. Entering metadata in Word 2010.

   

10. Now click the Save icon, save the document locally to My Documents, and close the document. For this example, the document is saved as Mission_Statement_for_Project_ABC.
11. Navigate to the Metadata Test 1 document library and upload the document by clicking the Upload button, then the Browse button, and locating the document, clicking Open, and then clicking OK.
12. As shown in Figure 22.3, the upload window prompts for additional metadata, including the Title field, Subject field, and Project Name drop-down list. Recall that Subject and Project Name were added in steps 3 to 5. Note that content is already populated in the Subject field. This is because the Word document has a metadata field defined within the document named Subject in which text was entered from Word in step 9. Select Project ABC in the drop-down menu next to Project Name. Click Save.

    Figure 22.3. Adding metadata to the document on upload.

    

13. The document will now appear in the document library Metadata Test 1 with several metadata columns populated: The Name column, which contains the filename of the document; the Modified column, which contains the date and time the file was last modified (the date and time it was uploaded to the document library) and modified by information; and the Subject and Project Name metadata columns that were added in this exercise.
14. Next, the document will be moved to the second document library that was created. To accomplish this, click the Library tab, click the Open with Explorer button, and a new window will open, showing the contents of Metadata Test 1 document library.
15. Return to SharePoint and navigate to Metadata Test 2 library that was created in step 6, click the Library tab, and click the Open with Explorer button.
16. Click the document in the Explorer window for Metadata Test 1 and drag it to the Explorer window for Metadata Test 2. This will move the document from Metadata Test 1 library to Metadata Test 2.
17. Navigate to the Metadata Test 2 library and the document will appear as shown in Figure 22.4. The Subject column will be populated, but there is no Project Name column. A valid question to ask at this point is this: “What happened to the metadata in the Project Name column?”

    Figure 22.4. Document copied to second document library without the Project Name metadata field.

    

18. To answer this question, from the Metadata Test 2 library, hover over the document and click Edit in Microsoft Word from the drop-down menu, click OK for the warning, and it will open in Word.
19. Click File tab, click the Info link on the left side, and then click the Properties drop-down menu on the right side and select Show Document Panel.
20. This time, the Document Panel will display the Server properties information by default because the document is being opened from a SharePoint document library. Notice that the Subject field is populated, but there is no Project Name field visible because that metadata column does not exist in the document library (Metadata Test 2) it was opened from.
21. To find the Project Name metadata, click the drop-down menu next to Document Properties - Server and choose Advanced Properties from the list. The Advanced Properties window will open.
22. Click the Custom tab, and note that Project Name appears in the Properties window, with the value Project ABC (as shown in Figure 22.5), which was added to the document in step 12.

    Figure 22.5. Advanced Properties, Custom tab showing metadata exists in the Word document.

    

A natural question at this point is, “How do non-Microsoft Office documents behave in similar tests?” The administrator should experiment with different types of files, such as a PDF file, for example.