12 reasons to maintain folders in SharePoint are a bad idea

1. Usability. Nested folder structure is only known to the person who created it. Also, too many sub-folders tend to “hide” things.

2. URL length limitation. SharePoint adds all folder and sub-folder names to URL. Overall URL length is limited to around 260 characters. You are out of luck if you create too many sub-folders.

3. File URL. Moving file from one folder to another means change of file URL.

4. Security. Maintaining Security by folders in SharePoint is an administrative nightmare. Don’t even think about doing it!

5. User experience. User Experience (navigation, finding the documents) just stinks with folders (it is so 1990’s!)

6. File duplication. With folders you can deposit multiple copies of same file into different locations – not a good thing when you try to organize documents and data in the first place!

7. 1 Lonely View. There is another reason NOT to user folders. With folders, you get one view: the folder view. Using metadata, you can create unlimited number of views by whatever properties you have setup (i.e. organize documents by date, by customer, by project, etc.) So the document browsing experience is much better-off.

8. Can’t Sort & Filter. Since your files are buried in the folders, you can’t really benefit from sorting and filtering capabilities of document library headers (unless of course you are just sorting and filtering in the particular folder).

9. Change is hard.  It’s hard to change folder structure, while changing metadata is easy.

10. Lost documents. You can “lose” documents when placed in the wrong folder. Additionally, Also, too many sub-folders tend to hide things, making it impossible or too time-consuming for users to find a particular document.

11. Navigation. When you are in a particular sub-folder, there is no way to tell in which folder you are at any given time, and no easy way to navigate to the parent folder (there is no breadcrumb on folder navigation menu available)

12. Cost. If you are essentially recreating nested folders you had on file share, by using SharePoint, you have got yourself one expensive file share. Why not stay with folders on shared drive? Or go with the DropBox account?

So that is my list. Do you have any other ones that you think should be added? Will be happy to discuss this topic further via email or on Social Media. Email me at dvsivakrishna@gmail.com