So during the Portland SharePoint User Group meeting today (February Meeting) the topic of Quick Parts came up and how they can be used in SharePoint. Now Quick Parts have been around in MS Word since 3003, they started getting there feet into SharePoint in 2007. In this post I am going to cover MS Word functionality, how to add it to SharePoint 2010, and SharePoint 2007. So enjoy.
So we are going to add a Quick Part in a Word document first.
To Use Quick Parts in your Document:
(I am going to add the Author field to a Footer)
1. Open your Word Document
2. Select the area in the page you want to add the field, in this case I am adding to the footer.
3. In the Ribbon, access the ‘Insert’ and click the drop down menu for ‘Quick Parts’.
4. You now have a few options be default:
Autotext:
This gives you the ability to add fields such as Author, or other pre-defined Building Block Property in the Document (you can also right click on either option provided to modify or change the properties on the fly.
Document Property:
So document property is going to pull directly from the Document Properties Panel, which you can access in Word 2010:
1. Open your Word Document
2. Select ‘File’ then ‘Info’ on the Ribbon.
3. You will see it on the right side of the window, as you can see below:
To add a Document Property to the page:
1. Open your Word Document
2. Select the area in the page you want to add the field, in this case I am adding to the footer.
3. In the Ribbon, access the ‘Insert’ and click the drop down menu for ‘Quick Parts’.
4. Select ‘Document Property’ then select your desired property to insert:
Field:
This gives you the ability to pull in default fields stored in Microsoft Word, or build custom formulas as you may need.
1. Open your Word Document
2. Select the area in the page you want to add the field, in this case I am adding to the footer.
3. In the Ribbon, access the ‘Insert’ and click the drop down menu for ‘Quick Parts’.
4. You now select ‘Field’
Using the Building Block Organizer function:
There are numerous Building Block galleries in Word 2010, available to you; Headers, Footers, text Boxes, Cover Pages, Watermarks, etc to make your document look, more professional and organized. Word 2010 provides a way to customize building blocks to fit your needs. Creating custom Building Blocks are very simple task to pull-off, you can also add them to relevant galleries for future use.
1. Open your Word Document
2. Select the area in the page you want to add the field, in this case I am adding to the footer.
3. In the Ribbon, access the ‘Insert’ and click the drop down menu for ‘Quick Parts’.
4. Access ‘Building Block Organizer’
Steps for SharePoint 2010:
To Use Quick Parts in your SharePoint Library:
1. Create your new library
2. Build the appropriate columns (if you add out-of-the-box quick parts first, appears to be no way to promote them).
3. Create a new document in the library.
4. Save the Document (the ‘Document Property’ listing under ‘Quick Parts’ will be grayed out until the document has been saved).
5. In Word 2010, access the ‘Insert’ ribbon and click the drop down menu for ‘Quick Parts’.
6. Go to the ‘Document Property’ listing, and select your new column (repeat as needed to add other columns)
7. Arrange fields, and add descriptions, as desired.
8. Save the updated document locally (anyplace easy to access is fine). We’ll be using this as the template for our new content type.
9. Go to Site Actions, Site Settings and Site Content Types to ‘Create’ your new content type
10. Name etc, your new Content Type and click OK.
11. In the next window select the ‘Advanced Settings’ link, choose ‘Upload a new document template’ and point it to your newly downloaded file.
12. Go back to your new library, under Settings, Document Library Settings choose the Advanced Settings link and choose ‘Yes’ for ‘Allow management of content types’.
13. In the Library Settings area (under Content Types), Add from existing Content Types to select your newly created Content Type (remove the other from the list if you like)
Steps for SharePoint 2007:
To Use Quick Parts in your SharePoint Library:
1. Create your new library
2. Build the appropriate columns (if you add out-of-the-box quick parts first, appears to be no way to promote them).
3. Create a new document in the library.
4. Save the Document (the ‘Document Property’ listing under ‘Quick Parts’ will be grayed out until the document has been saved).
5. In Word 2007, access the ‘Insert’ ribbon and click the drop down menu for ‘Quick Parts’.
6. Go to the ‘Document Property’ listing, and select your new column (repeat as needed to add other columns)
7. Arrange fields, and add descriptions, as desired.
8. Save the updated document locally (anyplace easy to access is fine). We’ll be using this as the template for our new content type.
9. Go to Site Actions, Site Settings and Site Content Types to ‘Create’ your new content type
10. Name etc, your new Content Type and click OK.
11. In the next window select the ‘Advanced Settings’ link, choose ‘Upload a new document template’ and point it to your newly downloaded file.
12. Go back to your new library, under Settings, Document Library Settings choose the Advanced Settings link and choose ‘Yes’ for ‘Allow management of content types’.
13. In the Library Settings area (under Content Types), Add from existing Content Types to select your newly created Content Type (remove the other from the list if you like)
Conclusion
Hope that gets you going into a new way of applying metadata not just to columns, but into the forms themselves. Imagine being able to quickly update a product, an author, publish date, or any metadata area on a document, and have it visible via a view or dashboard.
Now you ask what about Excel and other office product. Each does have a special ability to integrate data columns and metadata into the document and vis versa. Hint in Excel it is the ‘Data’ tab.