SharePoint 2013 – List / Library / App Naming

Just a quick tidbit about naming the apps, lists, libraries, etc. that you create in your SharePoint site. 

As it did in 2010, SharePoint 2013 adds the ‘%20’ string to your URL if you put a space in your list name. For example, if you create a list called “My Cool List”, the URL will end up looking like:

/Lists/My%20Cool%List/viewname.aspx

It’s not a terrible thing, but it can be irritating in some scenarios. 

The easy way to get around this is to follow a best practice of naming without spaces.  You can then change the list name after the fact without the URL changing. 

  1. Create the list, when asked for the list name, use no spaces: “MyCoolList”
  2. The list will be created and the URL will be nice and neat: /Lists/MyCoolList/viewname.aspx
  3. The list title will show up as “MyCoolList” – again, not a horrible thing in itself, but not great UX either. 
  4. Go to List Settings
  5. Use the List name, description and navigation link to change the name to a more readable “My Cool List”
  6. The URL will remain the same, but the readable list title is now more user friendly. 

2 comments

  1. OK…. So even the skilled make mistakes… what happens in SP2013 when you make the mistake and leave in the spaces. In SPD2010 you could rename the library and ‘fix’ the URL %20 problem. I can’t seem to figure out how to do that in SPD2013… any clues?

  2. And another 10 min of persistence… in SPD 2013, goto All Files > Lists and then rename the list or library there (change the URL). Then go into Lists and Libraries and change the List Name there, which is the ‘display’ name of the List.

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