SharePoint Online is fixing a long existing required metadate sync issue

Microsoft’s SharePoint Online has been an important staple of the Office suite for quite some time. The flexibility of the file sharing service has made it quite popular for any size business that needs some way to store and share important documents. The main way SharePoint manages their documents is through document libraries which keeps documents organized through the column system. As part of their annual August update, SharePoint Online will be bring some changes to this column system which may clear up some headaches that have always been associated with the feature.

The new change, quoted here, mostly refers to a fix for an old issue that has frustrated users for quite some time: “SharePoint has long allowed document libraries to have custom columns with required metadata; however, the sync client has only treated these libraries with required columns as read-only. With this change, these libraries will sync with read/write privileges.” That is the change in Microsoft’s own words, and while it may seem small, it will change how SharePoint users interact with document library columns and document libraries by making them more flexible.

In the past, if a user were to attempt to open a document in OneDrive by selecting it from a document library in SharePoint, and that document had a custom, required metadata column on it, it would be impossible to edit in OneDrive. Before this important change, the user would have to manually enter the document library, go through the settings on the library, and then strip out all required fields on any custom metadata. Any time a user attempted to modify any document which had required metadata, it would throw an error and be unable to sync back into SharePoint. This error essentially makes having required metadata completely worthless unless the documents were completely flawless and never needed to be changed.

For those who knew about this issue, it did have a workaround of sorts. Essentially, the column’s required field would have to be removed, then the document manually edited, then the required field added back again. Of course, this is provided that the user has access and the knowledge required to manually edit the metadata of a document library column, which was not always the case. Alternatively, some users may have been forced to choose whether they wanted something required or editable, and if they chose read/write capabilities, it meant that there could be times in which something was supposed to be required, but nothing was forcing it to be required and, as a result, a document may have made it through the system undetected. Other users may have decided that before a document with metadata was uploaded, it must be complete and fully read-only. In practice, it is rarely the case that a given document exists without needing to be edited.

This long-time issue may have caused users to completely avoid creating metadata columns due to the frustrating nature of this error, which leaves out a much of the advanced and important customization that metadata provided. While the consequences of the decision to completely remove what would otherwise be a required field can sometimes be very dire, in most cases this was a frequent issue which needed to be worked around. The change will make life easier for the day to day user.

The change itself really is not all that complicated. Once it is put into place, a user will be able to visit a document library and search through any document on the list which has not yet been made read-only, open it up in OneDrive, make some change, and have it automatically sync back to SharePoint. The result being an autosave for both the user and the document library. Ultimately, the resolution of this problem will lead to less overall administrative time being wasted on figuring out how to solve this problem, or simply implementing one of the workarounds that Microsoft has provided for a while.

It is also worth noting that Microsoft is committed to keeping SharePoint Online up to date and it listens to community feedback regarding issues day to day users face. This was one of the most frustrating parts of SharePoint for some users, so much so that Microsoft gave advanced notice to its partners about its resolution before the August update’s full details were even released. Microsoft is constantly improving, fixing, or reworking old systems inside SharePoint and they have been for years as they do with most of their products. This August’s update is another step in the right direction for Microsoft and for SharePoint Online, and it will hopefully come with some other awesome changes, improvements, and fixes as well.