October 6, 2025 • 16 mins
Ever opened a SharePoint library so messy you didn’t know where to start? The kind full of “final_final_really_final.docx” chaos, folders from 2016, and documents with no owner in sight?
In this episode, we stage a SharePoint intervention. I’ll walk you through how I took one out-of-control document library and transformed it into a clean, structured container that actually works — using nothing but out-of-the-box SharePoint features.
You’ll learn the exact steps I take to:
- Identify the mess behind “version seven really final” chaos
- Apply metadata that instantly brings structure and findability
- Use content types to separate working documents from published ones
- Clean up without breaking links, losing history, or starting over
This story builds on last week’s Policy & Procedure Hub design — but this time, we’re taking it to the ground level: a single library, one team, one intervention.
And at the end, I’ll share a practical next step if you’re ready to make your own content Copilot-ready — my 60-minute mini course, Fix the Mess™ – Preparing Your SharePoint for Copilot.
Because the fix isn’t more AI. It’s better organisation.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
If you've ever opened a SharePoint library and
found final version 7, reallyfinal, this episode is for you.
Hey everyone, welcome back tothe Simply SharePoint podcast,
(00:23):
where we fix the mess, simplifythe chaos, and make SharePoint
actually work for real people.
This week, on my blog, I shareda big project story.
The policy and procedure hubthat became the single source of
truth across an entireorganization.
We use nothing fancy, no customcode, no third-party tools, just
(00:45):
good, clean SharePointfundamentals done well.
But this week we're gettingpersonal.
Because while it's great to talkabout organizational
transformations, sometimes thereal battle happens inside one
very messy document library.
The kind of library buried underfiles called final underscore
(01:06):
version underscore sevenunderscore really underscore
final.
Yeah, that one.
So today we're staging aSharePoint intervention.
Every team has one.
(01:27):
A document library that'sbasically the digital equivalent
of a junk drawer.
It starts innocently.
Someone creates a folder calledDras, someone else adds archive,
then someone decides to renameeverything final.
Before long, you've got nestedfolders, hundreds of duplicates,
and a mysterious folder calledold that no one's opened since
(01:49):
2018.
And the worst part?
People still depend on it tomake business decisions.
When I was brought in to fixthis particular library, no one
could tell me where the latestversion of anything licked.
The team had actually startedemailing attachments again
because search results wereuseless.
Does this sound familiar?
(02:10):
That's when I realized thiswasn't just a cleanup job, this
was an intervention.
So once we'd taken a deep breathand agreed not to touch anything
just yet, I started the realintervention process.
(02:30):
The first thing I did was mapthe mess, and I mean literally.
I exported an inventory of everyfile in that library.
The names, owners, last modifieddates, and sizes.
This gave me visibility intowhat was active, what was
abandoned, and who wasresponsible for what.
(02:52):
Next, I asked one simplequestion to the team.
What do you actually need thislibrary to do for you?
And that question completelychanged the conversation.
Because instead of we just needbetter search, what they
actually wanted was confidenceto know they were using the
right document every time.
(03:13):
That's when I explained mygolden rule, which is you don't
fix search, you fix thearchitecture.
If you can't find what you needin a few clicks or by filtering
a view, your library isn'tstructured properly.
It's not a search problem, it'sa structure problem.
So that's where we started.
(03:34):
I built the new structure aroundmetadata, not folders.
I know people love theirfolders, but in this case the
folders were the problem.
They were hiding context.
So I flattened the entirestructure and replaced it with
clean metadata.
We used four simple columns.
First was department, so whoowns it.
(03:56):
Second was document type.
Is it a policy, a form, aprocedure, etc.?
The status, is it working,approved, or archived?
And owner, the person who isresponsible.
That's it.
Four fields.
Every single document had tohave those four pieces of
(04:17):
information before it could livein the library.
Then I created a few smartviews, the first being my
department's documents, thenapproved documents only.
Another one called Drafts inProgress and then recently
updated.
These views became the magicfilters that replaced folders
(04:41):
entirely.
People could now click once ortwice and instantly see what
they needed, but no digging, noguessing.
And the beauty of it was itlooked simple.
We didn't build some big newsystem.
We just used SharePointproperly.
Once we had the structure inplace, we started cleaning up
(05:04):
the actual content.
Every final version went througha check.
We reviewed it, tagged it withthe correct metadata, and
deleted or archived theduplicates.
We agreed on a simple rule (05:15):
one current version per document
type.
No duplicates, no half-editeddrafts hiding in folders.
I also created a workingdocuments view where people
could collaborate and draft.
Once approved, the file wasconverted to PDF and moved into
(05:35):
a published view.
That one change alone stoppedall the confusion between draft
and final.
We didn't need an expensiveapproval workflow or a power
automate circus, just aconsistent pattern that everyone
followed.
So what happened next?
Well, the difference was day andnight.
(05:57):
Suddenly, search results madesense again, not because we
fixed search, but becauseSharePoint finally had something
clean and structured to searchthrough.
The team could filter bydepartment or status and
instantly find what they needed.
No one had to guess whichversion was the latest.
And for the first time in years,the library actually reflected
(06:18):
how people worked.
Within a week, the noisestopped.
No more where's that finalversion emails, no more back and
forth attachments in Teamschats, people started trusting
the system again.
(06:41):
Now here's the thing.
We'd built a really cleanstructure, but you can't just
hand people a new way of workingand expect magic to happen.
That's where user training comesin.
We had to make sure the teamunderstood the why as much as
the how, because structure onlyworks if people know how to use
it, and more importantly, why itmatters.
(07:04):
So I ran short practicaltraining sessions.
I also recorded them and putthem up on their intranet.
They were nothing formal, just30-minute drop-ins where I was
able to show them some quicktips so they could start working
in that library right away, butalso properly.
The first one was how to editmetadata quickly, right from the
(07:27):
document library grid view.
The second one was how to filteror group by department or status
to find what they needed fast.
And thirdly, how to spot gapsusing a special view I'd built
called missing metadata.
Now, a quick note on that.
(07:50):
When you do, people get blockedfrom saving, they get
frustrated, and they startworking around the system.
Usually by saving locally orrenaming files temp.doc, which
is what we were trying to getaway from in the first place.
Instead, I make it visible andnot painful.
(08:10):
That missing metadata viewbecame the friendly nudge that
said, hey, you've got a fewthings to tidy up.
It empowered users instead ofpunishing them.
We also covered version historybecause most people have never
really explored what that does.
I showed them how they couldroll back a document, see who
(08:32):
made changes, and use thatinstead of final underscore
version underscore h dot doc.
Then we talked about the draftto final process.
Once a file was ready, it wasapproved, converted to PDF, and
surfaced in the published view.
That clarity helped everyoneunderstand what final actually
(08:56):
meant, not just I stoppedediting this.
And this wasn't a one-and-donething.
We built ongoing learning intothe process.
Anytime a new team member joinedor the library evolved, we did a
refresher.
Because good informationmanagement isn't a project, it's
(09:17):
a habit.
You just need to clean them up,give them structure, and make
sure the people using themactually understand how it all
(09:40):
fits together.
And yet, lately I've noticedsomething interesting.
There's this growing belief thatyou can just build an AI agent
or switch on Copilot and it willsomehow do the heavy lifting for
you.
Like AI is just going to swoopin and magically organize all
those years of chaos.
I wish it worked that way, butit doesn't.
(10:01):
Copilot or any agent you buildis only as good as the
information you feed it.
If your SharePoint is a mess,your AI will be confused too.
It'll pull outdated documents,show draft versions, and surface
content that should have beenarchived years ago.
So even though we're living inthis shiny new AI era, the same
(10:23):
fundamentals still matter.
Your information architecture,the way you name files, apply
metadata, design content types,and structure libraries, that's
what makes AI smart.
That's what helps Copilot givemeaningful, accurate answers.
When I talk about AI readiness,I'm really talking about data
discipline.
(10:44):
Every column, every term, everytitle contributes to that
readiness.
If your metadata is missing orinconsistent, you can have the
best agent in the world.
It will still give bad results.
So before you start buildingthat next co-pilot extension or
fancy agent, ask yourself (11:00):
can a human find what they need in
three clicks?
If the answer is no, how isCo-Copilot going to find it?
So that's why I always say, andyes, this has become a bit of a
signature line.
The fix isn't more AI, it'sbetter organization.
(11:22):
Because here's what happens whenyou get the foundations right.
You don't waste time redesigningyour entire SharePoint site.
You refine it, you reuse whatalready works: the libraries,
the lists, the metadata columns.
You make it scalable andsustainable so every future
project builds on the same logicinstead of reinventing it.
(11:44):
You don't need a big rebuild ora new app.
You need clarity.
You need good informationarchitecture and a team that
understands how to keep itclean.
When those pieces come together,SharePoint stops being that
annoying system people avoid andbecomes the foundation that
makes every AI tool around itwork better.
(12:07):
So remember, before youautomate, before you integrate,
before you add co-pilot, getyour content right first,
because the smartest AI in theworld can't fix a messy library.
(12:31):
Once the structure was in placeand the training kicked in, the
change was obvious.
That same team who used to rolltheir eyes at SharePoints
suddenly started using it everyday.
And not because they were forcedto.
They used it because it worked.
There was no more where's thefinal version messages in teams.
No more desperate searchesthrough folders called old or
(12:54):
backups.
Instead, people could filter aview, click twice, and land
exactly where they needed to be.
The results went beyond tidyfolders.
Meetings stopped wasting 15minutes trying to find the right
document.
New starters could get up tospeed within hours instead of
weeks because everything theyneeded was already surfaced with
(13:14):
their department.
And the best part, your teamactually started replicating the
model.
Other departments saw how wellit worked and asked, can we have
that too?
That's when I knew it had stuck,when the design became a
pattern.
But here's where it got evenmore interesting.
Once everything was clean andconsistent, we introduced
(13:35):
Copilot.
And for the first time, itactually made sense.
When people asked Copilot tosummarize all approved safety
procedures updated this year, itcould do it perfectly.
Why?
Because the metadata, contenttypes, and the file names were
right.
That's the hidden benefit ofdoing this groundwork.
(13:56):
You're not just building abetter library, you're building
a foundation that every AI tooldepends on.
Because here's the reality (14:03):
AI isn't replacing your information
architecture.
It's powered by it.
If your structure is weak,Copilot guesses.
If your metadata is clean,copilot shines.
And that's why I love seeingthese interventions in action.
They prove that SharePointdoesn't need to be rebuilt or
(14:24):
replaced.
It just needs to be understoodand maintained.
So the outcome of this projectwasn't just a cleaner library.
It was a smarter, calmer, moreconfident team, a team that
trusted their content again.
And as a result, trusted thetechnology.
When you get that right,SharePoint stops being the
(14:46):
system that IT made us use andbecomes the tool that quietly
powers everything else,including your AI.
(15:11):
What started as a cleanupproject ended up changing the
way the team worked and even howthey saw SharePoint.
Because when your content isorganized, everything else, from
collaboration to co-pilot,finally clicks into place.
And that's the real lesson here.
AI doesn't replace goodinformation management, it
(15:33):
rewards it.
When your content is wellstructured, your AI becomes
smarter, your users become moreconfident, and your organization
finally starts working the wayit was meant to.
So if you take one thing awayfrom today's episode, let it be
this.
The fix isn't more AI, it'sbetter organization.
Next week, we're going a leveldeeper.
(15:55):
I'll be sharing exactly how Idesign metadata and information
architecture from scratch whenI'm building new SharePoint
solutions.
I'll walk you through my go-tocolumns, my naming conventions,
and the patterns that make everyproject scalable and co pilot
ready from day one.
Until then, I'm Liza from SimplySharePoint.
(16:19):
Thanks for listening, andremember if it takes more than a
few clicks to find what youneed, you don't need better
search.
You need better structure.
See you next time.
If you've ever opened a SharePoint library and
found final version 7, reallyfinal, this episode is for you.
Hey everyone, welcome back tothe Simply SharePoint podcast,
(00:23):
where we fix the mess, simplifythe chaos, and make SharePoint
actually work for real people.
This week, on my blog, I shareda big project story.
The policy and procedure hubthat became the single source of
truth across an entireorganization.
We use nothing fancy, no customcode, no third-party tools, just
(00:45):
good, clean SharePointfundamentals done well.
But this week we're gettingpersonal.
Because while it's great to talkabout organizational
transformations, sometimes thereal battle happens inside one
very messy document library.
The kind of library buried underfiles called final underscore
(01:06):
version underscore sevenunderscore really underscore
final.
Yeah, that one.
So today we're staging aSharePoint intervention.
Every team has one.
(01:27):
A document library that'sbasically the digital equivalent
of a junk drawer.
It starts innocently.
Someone creates a folder calledDras, someone else adds archive,
then someone decides to renameeverything final.
Before long, you've got nestedfolders, hundreds of duplicates,
and a mysterious folder calledold that no one's opened since
(01:49):
2018.
And the worst part?
People still depend on it tomake business decisions.
When I was brought in to fixthis particular library, no one
could tell me where the latestversion of anything licked.
The team had actually startedemailing attachments again
because search results wereuseless.
Does this sound familiar?
(02:10):
That's when I realized thiswasn't just a cleanup job, this
was an intervention.
So once we'd taken a deep breathand agreed not to touch anything
just yet, I started the realintervention process.
(02:30):
The first thing I did was mapthe mess, and I mean literally.
I exported an inventory of everyfile in that library.
The names, owners, last modifieddates, and sizes.
This gave me visibility intowhat was active, what was
abandoned, and who wasresponsible for what.
(02:52):
Next, I asked one simplequestion to the team.
What do you actually need thislibrary to do for you?
And that question completelychanged the conversation.
Because instead of we just needbetter search, what they
actually wanted was confidenceto know they were using the
right document every time.
(03:13):
That's when I explained mygolden rule, which is you don't
fix search, you fix thearchitecture.
If you can't find what you needin a few clicks or by filtering
a view, your library isn'tstructured properly.
It's not a search problem, it'sa structure problem.
So that's where we started.
(03:34):
I built the new structure aroundmetadata, not folders.
I know people love theirfolders, but in this case the
folders were the problem.
They were hiding context.
So I flattened the entirestructure and replaced it with
clean metadata.
We used four simple columns.
First was department, so whoowns it.
(03:56):
Second was document type.
Is it a policy, a form, aprocedure, etc.?
The status, is it working,approved, or archived?
And owner, the person who isresponsible.
That's it.
Four fields.
Every single document had tohave those four pieces of
(04:17):
information before it could livein the library.
Then I created a few smartviews, the first being my
department's documents, thenapproved documents only.
Another one called Drafts inProgress and then recently
updated.
These views became the magicfilters that replaced folders
(04:41):
entirely.
People could now click once ortwice and instantly see what
they needed, but no digging, noguessing.
And the beauty of it was itlooked simple.
We didn't build some big newsystem.
We just used SharePointproperly.
Once we had the structure inplace, we started cleaning up
(05:04):
the actual content.
Every final version went througha check.
We reviewed it, tagged it withthe correct metadata, and
deleted or archived theduplicates.
We agreed on a simple rule (05:15):
one current version per document
type.
No duplicates, no half-editeddrafts hiding in folders.
I also created a workingdocuments view where people
could collaborate and draft.
Once approved, the file wasconverted to PDF and moved into
(05:35):
a published view.
That one change alone stoppedall the confusion between draft
and final.
We didn't need an expensiveapproval workflow or a power
automate circus, just aconsistent pattern that everyone
followed.
So what happened next?
Well, the difference was day andnight.
(05:57):
Suddenly, search results madesense again, not because we
fixed search, but becauseSharePoint finally had something
clean and structured to searchthrough.
The team could filter bydepartment or status and
instantly find what they needed.
No one had to guess whichversion was the latest.
And for the first time in years,the library actually reflected
(06:18):
how people worked.
Within a week, the noisestopped.
No more where's that finalversion emails, no more back and
forth attachments in Teamschats, people started trusting
the system again.
(06:41):
Now here's the thing.
We'd built a really cleanstructure, but you can't just
hand people a new way of workingand expect magic to happen.
That's where user training comesin.
We had to make sure the teamunderstood the why as much as
the how, because structure onlyworks if people know how to use
it, and more importantly, why itmatters.
(07:04):
So I ran short practicaltraining sessions.
I also recorded them and putthem up on their intranet.
They were nothing formal, just30-minute drop-ins where I was
able to show them some quicktips so they could start working
in that library right away, butalso properly.
The first one was how to editmetadata quickly, right from the
(07:27):
document library grid view.
The second one was how to filteror group by department or status
to find what they needed fast.
And thirdly, how to spot gapsusing a special view I'd built
called missing metadata.
Now, a quick note on that.
(07:50):
When you do, people get blockedfrom saving, they get
frustrated, and they startworking around the system.
Usually by saving locally orrenaming files temp.doc, which
is what we were trying to getaway from in the first place.
Instead, I make it visible andnot painful.
(08:10):
That missing metadata viewbecame the friendly nudge that
said, hey, you've got a fewthings to tidy up.
It empowered users instead ofpunishing them.
We also covered version historybecause most people have never
really explored what that does.
I showed them how they couldroll back a document, see who
(08:32):
made changes, and use thatinstead of final underscore
version underscore h dot doc.
Then we talked about the draftto final process.
Once a file was ready, it wasapproved, converted to PDF, and
surfaced in the published view.
That clarity helped everyoneunderstand what final actually
(08:56):
meant, not just I stoppedediting this.
And this wasn't a one-and-donething.
We built ongoing learning intothe process.
Anytime a new team member joinedor the library evolved, we did a
refresher.
Because good informationmanagement isn't a project, it's
(09:17):
a habit.
You just need to clean them up,give them structure, and make
sure the people using themactually understand how it all
(09:40):
fits together.
And yet, lately I've noticedsomething interesting.
There's this growing belief thatyou can just build an AI agent
or switch on Copilot and it willsomehow do the heavy lifting for
you.
Like AI is just going to swoopin and magically organize all
those years of chaos.
I wish it worked that way, butit doesn't.
(10:01):
Copilot or any agent you buildis only as good as the
information you feed it.
If your SharePoint is a mess,your AI will be confused too.
It'll pull outdated documents,show draft versions, and surface
content that should have beenarchived years ago.
So even though we're living inthis shiny new AI era, the same
(10:23):
fundamentals still matter.
Your information architecture,the way you name files, apply
metadata, design content types,and structure libraries, that's
what makes AI smart.
That's what helps Copilot givemeaningful, accurate answers.
When I talk about AI readiness,I'm really talking about data
discipline.
(10:44):
Every column, every term, everytitle contributes to that
readiness.
If your metadata is missing orinconsistent, you can have the
best agent in the world.
It will still give bad results.
So before you start buildingthat next co-pilot extension or
fancy agent, ask yourself (11:00):
can a human find what they need in
three clicks?
If the answer is no, how isCo-Copilot going to find it?
So that's why I always say, andyes, this has become a bit of a
signature line.
The fix isn't more AI, it'sbetter organization.
(11:22):
Because here's what happens whenyou get the foundations right.
You don't waste time redesigningyour entire SharePoint site.
You refine it, you reuse whatalready works: the libraries,
the lists, the metadata columns.
You make it scalable andsustainable so every future
project builds on the same logicinstead of reinventing it.
(11:44):
You don't need a big rebuild ora new app.
You need clarity.
You need good informationarchitecture and a team that
understands how to keep itclean.
When those pieces come together,SharePoint stops being that
annoying system people avoid andbecomes the foundation that
makes every AI tool around itwork better.
(12:07):
So remember, before youautomate, before you integrate,
before you add co-pilot, getyour content right first,
because the smartest AI in theworld can't fix a messy library.
(12:31):
Once the structure was in placeand the training kicked in, the
change was obvious.
That same team who used to rolltheir eyes at SharePoints
suddenly started using it everyday.
And not because they were forcedto.
They used it because it worked.
There was no more where's thefinal version messages in teams.
No more desperate searchesthrough folders called old or
(12:54):
backups.
Instead, people could filter aview, click twice, and land
exactly where they needed to be.
The results went beyond tidyfolders.
Meetings stopped wasting 15minutes trying to find the right
document.
New starters could get up tospeed within hours instead of
weeks because everything theyneeded was already surfaced with
(13:14):
their department.
And the best part, your teamactually started replicating the
model.
Other departments saw how wellit worked and asked, can we have
that too?
That's when I knew it had stuck,when the design became a
pattern.
But here's where it got evenmore interesting.
Once everything was clean andconsistent, we introduced
(13:35):
Copilot.
And for the first time, itactually made sense.
When people asked Copilot tosummarize all approved safety
procedures updated this year, itcould do it perfectly.
Why?
Because the metadata, contenttypes, and the file names were
right.
That's the hidden benefit ofdoing this groundwork.
(13:56):
You're not just building abetter library, you're building
a foundation that every AI tooldepends on.
Because here's the reality (14:03):
AI isn't replacing your information
architecture.
It's powered by it.
If your structure is weak,Copilot guesses.
If your metadata is clean,copilot shines.
And that's why I love seeingthese interventions in action.
They prove that SharePointdoesn't need to be rebuilt or
(14:24):
replaced.
It just needs to be understoodand maintained.
So the outcome of this projectwasn't just a cleaner library.
It was a smarter, calmer, moreconfident team, a team that
trusted their content again.
And as a result, trusted thetechnology.
When you get that right,SharePoint stops being the
(14:46):
system that IT made us use andbecomes the tool that quietly
powers everything else,including your AI.
(15:11):
What started as a cleanupproject ended up changing the
way the team worked and even howthey saw SharePoint.
Because when your content isorganized, everything else, from
collaboration to co-pilot,finally clicks into place.
And that's the real lesson here.
AI doesn't replace goodinformation management, it
(15:33):
rewards it.
When your content is wellstructured, your AI becomes
smarter, your users become moreconfident, and your organization
finally starts working the wayit was meant to.
So if you take one thing awayfrom today's episode, let it be
this.
The fix isn't more AI, it'sbetter organization.
Next week, we're going a leveldeeper.
(15:55):
I'll be sharing exactly how Idesign metadata and information
architecture from scratch whenI'm building new SharePoint
solutions.
I'll walk you through my go-tocolumns, my naming conventions,
and the patterns that make everyproject scalable and co pilot
ready from day one.
Until then, I'm Liza from SimplySharePoint.
(16:19):
Thanks for listening, andremember if it takes more than a
few clicks to find what youneed, you don't need better
search.
You need better structure.
See you next time.
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