Tag: Document Set

New Button Order ‘Bug’ and Document Sets

The Quirk

Using the SharePoint GUI to modify list or library settings with the goal of changing the ‘new button order’ or ‘default content type’ may yield unexpected results.

Under List Settings, this is the functionality in question
Under List Settings, this is the functionality in question

Confusingly (or perhaps to avoid confusion) the control which displays the ordering of the content types for the New button, along with their visibility, does not show the items in the order in which they have been set.

Initial view of the New button order control
Initial view of the New button order control

As an example of this, I will set a content type marked as not-visible to have an order of 1.

I have am marking a non-visible content type as the default content type (position 1)
I have am marking a non-visible content type as the default content type (position 1)

I press OK to save the form. Upon returning to the form it would be reasonable to expect to see the control rendered with the non-visible content type in position 1 as we have just set it to be this way.

I would have expected the control to render like this. IT DOES NOT!
I would have expected the control to render like this. IT DOES NOT!

However, this is not the case. You will see the content types listed in same order as before the change was made.

After making the change, the control is rendered in exactly the same way as it was before the change
After making the change, the control is rendered in exactly the same way as it was before the change

The control always displays the visible content types at the top of the list which are then sorted by order number. The content types which are not marked as visible are then shown in alphabetical order. Importantly, this is just how they are displayed. The actual content type order may be different depending on how you have set it.

So who cares?

Most likely there are very few people who will even notice this let alone care. In fact, in nearly all scenarios it makes perfect sense to render the control this way. That is, until you want to have a default content type that is not visible under the new button. At this point the control may become very misleading. There is really just one case where the control does not accurately display the functional impact of changing the content type order. When you set a non-visible content type as the default content type (position 1), it is still treated as the default content type, despite how the control may render it.

Why would you want a default content type that is not visible under the new button?

In my case it was because in the library’s root folder only document set content types and a particular document content type (A) were allowed. However, inside the document set only a different document content type was allowed (B). By setting the document set’s allowed content type you can have the new button display content types that are not listed as visible in the list settings. All good, you can only create documents of content type B inside the document set and only create document of content type A outside the document set.

My issue arose when a user uploaded a document to the document set. An uploaded document ignores the document set’s allowed content type and is created as the first content type listed on the New button order in the list settings. To workaround this issue I set content type B as position 1, which works as expected despite how the control may render it.