Getting ready

This recipe works for:

You require either the Design or Full Control permission level to create a site column.

How to do it...

How it works...

SharePoint lists are made up of different columns. These columns can be defined locally (on each list as they are needed) or as site columns, which can be shared by lists throughout the site collection.

If you think that you will need a column more than once, then you should once consider creating it as a site column rather than just adding it to your list directly.

Site columns are particularly useful for columns that contain lookup data or a set of choices (for example, your company's departments or its locations). Using site columns helps you get more consistency in the information that you store within SharePoint.

Site columns are a necessary first step to creating content types, as described in the next recipe.

See also