Add “Link to a Document” to a Document Library

I threw this together for a customer, and figured I’d blog it, as it’s generally fairly useful to remember how to do this again in the future.  The steps below help to guide you through the process of adding the “Link to a Document” content type to a document library.

1) Go into the Site Actions -> View All Site Content, and find the library you want to change

2) Go into the Library Settings for that library

3) Go into “Advanced Settings”, and choose “Allow management of content type” – Select “Yes”, when done, click “OK”

4) A new option will now be available on the Library Settings page, “Content Types”.  Choose “Add from existing site content types”.

5) From the list on the left, find “Link to a Document” and add it to the list on the right.

6) You will now have 2 content types, including “Link to a Document”.  Exit the settings page.

7) In your library, you will now have the ability to add a link to a document as a library “item”.  Choose this, and let’s try it out.

8) Basically what this allows you to do is to create a name / value pair, where the “Document Name” is what will show up in the library as the “name” and the URL is basically any reference that you want it to be (it could even link to google.com – for all SharePoint cares).  What you’ll likely want this to be is a URL to a document in the other site’s document library.

9) Finally, in case you didn’t know, the easiest way to get the Document URL for a file is to go to the file and choose “Email a link”.  This will pop open a new email message, but it’s the easiest means of getting the URL to a document.  Just steal the URL from the email and throw the email away.  Finally, paste that value into the dialog above, and you’re all set!

That should get you everything you need.