Scenario/Problem:
When viewing a document library in either a web part on the home page
or in one of the list views of that library, you might want to see more
details about a document before choosing what to do with it. These
details might include who wrote the document, its subject, and maybe
additional pieces of metadata describing the document (for example, the
client it was written for, the date it expires).
Solution: You can view the properties of a document in two ways: using the ribbon interface or using a drop-down menu.
Using the Files Ribbon
To view the metadata of a file by using the
ribbon, you click on the row for that file—but not on the link to the
file itself. To help you select a line, when you hover the mouse over a
row, the row is highlighted, and you see a tick sign on the left that
means clicking it will select the file row.
After you select a file, switch to the
“Files” ribbon by clicking the Files header to switch to it. On the
Files ribbon, click the View Properties button to view the file’s
properties as shown in Figure 1.
FIGURE 1 Select a single file by clicking a row, and click the View Properties button in the Files ribbon.
Using a Context Popup Menu
To view the metadata of a particular file, you click on the three dots next to the file’s name (refer to Figure 1) to open the file preview dialog. In this dialog you might see an actual preview of the file (shown in Figure 2),
if, as was explained before, the environment you are viewing has
Microsoft Office Web Apps. If not, you will see an empty box above some
of the file’s properties such as who was the last person to change it,
and who has permissions to see the file. The choices in the dialog
depend on the permissions you have on the file, on the applications
installed on your computer, and on the applications installed in
SharePoint. You might see more or fewer options than Figure 3 shows—and each file might present you with a different menu.
FIGURE 2 The file preview dialog.
FIGURE 3 Click the three dots in the dialog menu to open a drop-down menu with more options.
At the bottom of the dialog is a row of links
that enable you to perform several types of actions on the file. One of
these links is again just three dots. Clicking on these three dots
opens the context popup menu for the file, as shown in Figure 3.
In that menu, select View Properties to open the properties page (shown in Figure 4),
which shows all the properties the document has. You can click Close in
this page to return to the document library view you were on.
FIGURE 4 The file properties page.
Note
When you set properties on a Microsoft Office
file, the properties are copied into the file itself. When you upload a
file to a document library that has properties with the same names as
the file’s properties, they are copied back. This means that if you
download a file and then upload it to a different document library that
has the same properties, the data of the properties is retained.
