SharePoint Content Type And Word Template

One nice feature in SharePoint is that the SharePoint content type and its Word template can be cooperating together. The content type field values could be treated as metadata and is injected to its Word 2007 document template as document properties. These document properties can be viewed in Word’s information panel (enable it by Word 2007 setting Prepare->Properties). User can update these properties directly in information panel and upload the Word document back to SharePoint Document Library. The SharePoint list item’s corresponding fields will be updated automatically. The steps are:

1. Create an empty Word 2007 template.
2. Create a new Content Type by “Site Actions > Site Settings > Site Content Types > Create”, select “Document Content types – Document” as parent.
3. Add required fields to the new Content Type.
4. Upload the Word 2007 template by “Advanced settings > Upload a new document template”.
5. Create a new Document Library and enable the content type management by “Settings > Advanced settings > Allow management of content types? > Yes”.
6. Add content type created in step 2 to the document library created in step 5.
7. Add new document library item by selecting the template created in step 1.

If you don’t like working with Word information panel, you have option to use the Word content controls inside the Word document body to do similar things, and sync the metadata back to SharePoint. We can define the word template in our desire and associate document properties to Word document content controls. Following screen-shot illustrates how document properties can be tied to Word content controls inside Word document, note that Title, Title_fr, Sub_Title, Sub_Title_fr in the example are the Content Type fields inside SharePoint Document Library:


We can also create Word 2007 content controls under developer tab (Ribbon), but there is no direct association between the content controls and document properties if we do so. OpenXML and Word 2007 custom properties techniques are required for Word content automation (SharePoint/Word data binding). I will put more details about this in my next post.

Although SharePoint can generate document properties automatically, not all SharePoint fields are supported by document properties; and not all types of document property are supported by Word content controls. Following table lists mapping of common SharePoint fields and Word 2007 content control:

SharePoint Field Type	Word 2007 Content Control
Single line of text	Text (Not allow carriage returns)
Multiple lines of text	Text (Allow carriage returns)
Choice	Dropdown list
Number	Text with Schema validation
Currency	Text with Schema validation
Date and Time	Date picker
Yes/No	Dropdown list
Lookup	N/A
Person or Group	N/A
Hyperlink or Picture	N/A
Calculated	N/A
Custom filed	N/A

For those SharePoint fields missing World 2007 equivalent content control, we could create a Word content control compatible field in content type, and manually convert the original SharePoint field to that compatible field and versa vise inside list item event receiver. For example, a Text field can be used to map a custom field which is not recognized by Word 2007.