Bulk editing SharePoint Picture Library items
For some reason certain1 SharePoint lists don’t have the handy “Edit in datasheet” option available to allow bulk editing of items. One of these lists is the MOSS Picture Library which means that although images can be uploaded in bulk, users have no easy way of bulk tagging these items (e.g. adding ‘christmas party’ as a keyword to 20 photos at once).
I would have thought this was a fairly common scenario but couldn’t find a lot of info out there so here are some non-code alternatives to consider:
Create an Access View
As with the “Edit in Datasheet” functionality this requires the users to have MS Access installed locally, but unlike the “Edit in Datasheet” view this takes the user away from SharePoint and opens the Access client which is fairly clunky2. Having said that if only a few ‘power users’ are performing bulk updates this might be a viable way of providing bulk updating capabilities.
Colligo Contributor
This does require a per-user licence but has a bunch of great features including the ability to bulk upload and bulk tag items at the same time. If ease-of-use is a priority I’d definitely check this out. Colligo also offers wicked offline sync and email integration.
As shown below, after uploading multiple images through a standard windows explorer window users can tag the items all at once using the Colligo client (custom list fields included).
Depending on the requirements another easy alternative is to simply use a document library instead of a Picture Library. Obviously there is a loss of functionality including slideshow and image preview but this may be an option in some cases. If there are other options I’ve missed please drop a note in the comment section below.
1. The lists that don’t have the “Edit in Datasheet” option are: Calendar, Discussion Board, KPI List, Picture Library and Survey
2. Clunky: I got a security warning then a loading window for several seconds before opening the view in Access. It also made me re-create the entire view when I changed the list schema (i.e. added an extra column).
