Why We Don't Use Folders In Sharepoint

Folders are the most common convention of document management and storage in the PC world. The convenient metaphor of a filing cabinet, comforting and familiar, is how we trained Gen-Xers in storing and retrieving their files.

Sharepoint includes folder functionality within its document libraries. If you've been reading this blog for two weeks, you have already got that dripping water down your neck feeling at seeing any topic considered fit for discussion. Here is why such an apparently innocuous metaphor, The Folder, is up for its lashing.

Sharepoint effing hates it when you move files. No lie. It is one of the hardest things to do in the server, for reasons which are utterly opaque on the front end. You can upload and delete things with relative ease, but try shoving around where they "live" and you are in for a fight. 

Files will fail to move. They will flunk out for no reason, with unclear error messages, which are themselves larded with chevrons from poor server processing. This is handy when you are first learning. The chevrons contain secret, valuable information on how to reverse-engineer the default processes, and handy search strings for Google, but no lie, you cannot move files with any ease or grace.

The permission required is, at the very least, Manage Hierarchy. Contributors can't do it, neither can readers, and even people with Full Control will be sitting there watching paint dry as the Move Documents process grinds along. 

This becomes a problem because you will frequently have clients who want to have, say, a Document Library called Acquisitions, and within that library, folders for each document related to a specific Acquisition. Say, one called MCGRAW Klein, another with its own nest called STERLING Forebears. 

You are now in Document Hell. None of those items are stored in a way where even valuable tools like the List Item Editor can see them - each folder becomes the List Item, the documents themselves are hidden from view. You will need to figure out where each of them lives. You may suddenly need to edit and support the Enterprise Search Tool, itself an entirely separate circle of Hell. 

Rather than use folders, you should really just tag a fresh column on the side, called "metadata" or "category" or "pleaseNoMoreFolders" and enter the relevant document identifier in there. From there, you can generate library views that will sort and group information by that column, which basically is what your folder-loving people want, anyway. It will label them clearly and leave them findable, without ever triggering a move job that lasts six hours and drops 25% of the documents involved for unwritten reasons.

So, when SHOULD we support the vile Folder?

Easy. When we have something that is identical to the above but requires more privacy. Folders are functionally only useful for batch-sized permission control on individual items. So if you have ACQUISITIONS and want the ones that are not approved for main release to be private, wait, no, you really should just make a new document library and set its permissions.

Folders. They are a vestigial limb of document management and have no place here.