There are several ways to see the lists and document
libraries available in a site. The following sections demonstrate how
you can use these various ways to view the content in the site.
Direct Links in the Left Navigation Bar
Site
managers can use the left navigation bar to show various links in
different categories. Document libraries are usually shown under the
Documents header, and lists are usually under the Lists header, as
shown in Figure 1.
View All Lists and Libraries
Not
all the document libraries and lists are shown in the navigation bar.
Whether they are shown depends on how the site administrator set it up.
To
see all the libraries and lists available, use the View All Site
Content link in the navigation bar. This link directs you to a page
with all the content in the site. The document libraries are displayed
under the Document Libraries header, and the lists are displayed below
the Lists header, as shown in Figure 2.
Click the link to the document library to view the documents in it or the link to a list to see the list items in it.
Tip
If
the site has been customized and the View All Site Content link isn’t
on the page, you can get to the same page directly by typing _layouts/viewlsts.aspx at the end of the path to the site. For example, if your site is at http://sharepoint/sample, type http://sharepoint/sample/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx in your browser to get to the all content page.
Open a Document for Reading
When in a document library, just click the link to the document you are interested in (see Figure 3).
The document opens either in a new window or in the associated
application (Word documents open in Word, Excel workbooks open in
Excel, and so on), depending on your machine’s configuration.
Also,
depending on the installed applications on your machine and on the
level of permissions you have, you might be prompted with a choice of
how to open the file (see Figure 4). To read, choose Read Only and click OK.
View Properties of a Document
To
view the metadata of a particular file, move your mouse cursor over the
link to the document. An option to open a drop-down appears (see Figure 5).
If
you click the drop-down arrow, a menu opens. The choices in the menu
are different based on the permissions you have on the file, on the
applications installed on your computer, and the applications installed
in SharePoint. Therefore, you might see more or fewer options than the
ones in Figure 6, and each file may present you with a different menu.
Click View Properties to open the properties page. You then see all the properties that the document has.
Tip
When
you set properties on a file, the properties are copied into the file
itself. And when you upload a file with properties to a document
library that has properties with the same names, they are copied back.
This means that if you download a file and then upload it to a
different document library with the same properties, the data of the
properties is retained.
