SharePoint Naming Conventions Best Practices You Should Follow

This SharePoint tutorial explains on SharePoint naming conventions best practices which you should follow while providing names of a site collection, site, list, document library, views, folders, files or document, etc.

The same naming conventions can be followed for any version of SharePoint like SharePoint 2013/2016/2019 or SharePoint Online Office 365.

SharePoint Naming Conventions Best Practices

Now, we will see various SharePoint naming conventions best practices which you can follow while working or using SharePoint.

SharePoint Name Should always be small and meaningful

Always use a small and meaningful name for SharePoint site, subsite, list or document library names. By just looking at the name, a user should be able to know what is the purpose of that particular site, list or document library.

For example, I have taken a custom list in the SharePoint site to store all employee information of an organization. The custom list name should be “Employee Information”.

It is a good practice to give 24 characters in document and 14 in anything else in SharePoint while giving the naming. But when the long name is required we can give no issue with that.

Space should not be allowed in SharePoint Naming Convention

When we are creating a list or library or anything in SharePoint we should not give space in the name. If you provide space in between then the internet takes as “%20” which is not user-friendly and readable.

Example: “HR Portal” will look like HR%20Portal. So you should provide as HRPortal.

Other than that, If you put more space in the name the URL will become longer. We know the URL cannot be longer than 255 characters, So we should avoid space while giving the list and library name.

Your List or library name should be Camel case, means in a word the first letter should be capital.

For example, the file name should be like “EmployeeInformation ” means “e” and “i” is capital.

We can use underscore and hyphen in the file name instead of space.

“Employee Information” is wrong instead of that we can write “EmployeeInformation”, “Employee-Information” and “Employee_Information”.

In SharePoint first time what name you will provide, that will be considered as the internal name and that will appear in the URL also. So while creating a site, list or library, the first name you provide a name without space. And once it is created successfully, you can edit the name to give a meaningful display name which can contain spaces also.

Like while creating a document library, create with a name without space like “TrainingDocuments“. Once it is created, you can edit the display name to “Training Documents“.

In SharePoint Online, the entire file path should not be more than 400 characters which include file name and folder names etc.
And in SharePoint On-Premise the entire file path should not exceed 260 characters.

Avoid Repeating Naming Convention

In SharePoint avoid to give same name repeatedly. Suppose Your list name is similar to your site page name then it is little bit confusing. So always try not to give the same name more than time in SharePoint site.

Do not use Special Character in SharePoint

We should not use any of the special characters while giving the list name, filename, etc in SharePoint, but except two special characters i.e. “-” and “_”.

We should not use special character but we can use the numeric character.

• Characters not allowed: ” * : < > ? / \ |
• OneDrive for Business not allowed: ~ ” # % & * : < > ? / \ { | }.
• File and Folders name not allowed: Icon, .lock, CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1 – COM9, LPT1 – LPT9, _t, _w, _vti_, desktop.ini, any filename starting with ~$.
• (SPO) If custom script is blocked then file types are not alllowed: .aspx, .asmx, .ascx, .master, .xap, .swf, .jar, .xsf, .htc
• Files blocked in SharePoint 2016: .ashx, .asmx, .json, .soap, .svc, .xamlx etc

Add version in file name

Some of the users want to place the Version name in a file name of the SharePoint list and library. The best practice is to put the version number after the file name which is very consistent.Suppose our file name is “ContetntType” and version name is “v-1006” then our file name should be “ContentTypev-1006” or we can write “Content-Typev-1006” or “Content_Typev-1006”.

Rule for adding the date in documents

Some SharePoint user wants to place the date in the document name or article name in that place we need to follow the rule that places the date end of the file name in documents and front of the file name in case of the article.

For example, suppose my article name is “AboutOurCountry” so naming convention should be  “2018-08-20_AboutOurCountry”.

In case of a document, suppose our document name is “CompanyHealthInsuranceInformation” we need to give the name as “CompanyHealthInsuranceInformation_2018-08-20”.

Remember to maintain the standard for example always try to give the document naming convention like above and stick with that. So that users can easily use that and they will not confuse.

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In this SharePoint tutorial, we learned, SharePoint naming conventions best practices which you should follow while providing names of a site collection, site, list, document library, views, folders, files or document etc.