If your organisation has spent years storing documents in folders — inside folders, inside more folders — you've probably already experienced this: nobody knows where the current version of the contract is, there are three versions of the same document with different names, and finding something from six months ago is a minor adventure.
The good news is that SharePoint offers a much better way to organise information. It's called metadata.
What is metadata?
Metadata is tags that describe and classify your documents. Instead of deciding where to save a file, you describe what that file is.
For example, instead of saving an invoice at:
Finance > 2024 > Suppliers > Acme Ltd > Invoices
You assign metadata:
- Document type: Invoice
- Year: 2024
- Supplier: Acme Ltd
- Status: Paid
The file goes in a library. The tags describe everything else.
The advantages of metadata
Powerful search and filtering
Once your documents have metadata, you can filter by any combination. "Show me all unpaid invoices from 2024" — without opening a single folder, without searching by filename.
One document, many views
The same contract can be surfaced filtered by client, by year, by status, or by owner. With folders, it can only be in one place.
Fewer human errors
With folders, each person decides where they save things. With metadata, there are predefined fields — either the document has a supplier or it doesn't. Consistency is built in.
Integration with Power Automate
Metadata is the foundation of automation. A document tagged as "Pending Approval" can automatically trigger an approval flow. With folders, this isn't possible.
The advantages of folders
To be fair, folders do have their place:
- They're intuitive for users coming from Windows or File Explorer
- They work well for syncing with OneDrive on a local computer
- They're useful for separating content with different permissions — you can assign unique permissions to a folder, something you can't do with metadata
- They require less initial setup
- They help manage the 5,000-item view threshold — a library with many files may need folders to stay within that limit
The limitations of each approach
Limitations of folders
- Deep folder hierarchies can hit the 400-character URL limit — a real problem when you have five or six levels of subfolders
- A document can only be in one place — you can't view it from different perspectives without duplicating it
- It's not possible to automate processes based on where a file is saved
Limitations of metadata
- Requires initial configuration and team training
- Metadata columns aren't visible in Windows Explorer when syncing with OneDrive — if your team works primarily from the local desktop, this can be inconvenient
- Without folders, a library with many documents can hit the 5,000-item view threshold, which requires setting up filtered views or indexes
The future: Copilot and automatic tagging
One of the longstanding complaints about metadata is that someone has to take the time to tag each document. If users don't fill in the fields, the system doesn't work.
This is about to change. Microsoft is developing automatic tagging capabilities with Copilot AI — the system analyses the document content and suggests or assigns metadata automatically. If this becomes established, the biggest obstacle to metadata disappears, and the approach becomes much more attractive for organisations that currently see it as too much work.
The recommendation
For most organisations, the right combination is:
- Folders to separate broad categories or departments — for example, one library for HR and another for Finance.
- Metadata to organise content within each library — document type, status, client, year, department.
It's not folders or metadata. It's folders and metadata, each doing what it does best.
The first step
If your organisation already has Microsoft 365, you can start adding metadata to your SharePoint libraries today — without migrating anything or reorganising everything at once. Start with one library, define three or four columns relevant to your business, and see the impact.
Not sure where to begin? Get in touch and we'll work through it together.