SharePoint Naming Dos and Don’ts
Practical, opinionated guidance to keep names clean over time. Print this card and stick it next to the team’s monitors.
What it is
After the rules and the examples, the most useful naming guidance is the simple list of dos and don’ts. Things that are easy to remember, easy to apply, and easy to enforce in a few minutes of training. This is the printable cheat-sheet version.
The biggest don’ts come from old habits: putting your initials in filenames, including version numbers when SharePoint already does versioning, naming files ‘Final’ (knowing full well there’ll be a ‘Final v2’ next week). The biggest dos come from clarity: descriptive but concise, dates first, consistent abbreviations, rename on upload not later.
Print this card. Make it part of onboarding. Refer to it when reviewing a library that’s drifted. It won’t solve everything, but the small amount of repetition keeps the team honest.
When to use this
How to do it
Best practices
- Do: Use consistent abbreviations. ‘MKT’ or ‘Marketing’, ‘HR’ or ‘Human Resources’ — pick one and stick with it across all files.
- Do: Keep names descriptive but concise. Aim for 30-60 characters. More than 80 and you’re hurting readability.
- Do: Rename files immediately after upload. Not later. Later never comes.
- Don’t: Include your initials. SharePoint tracks Modified-By automatically.
- Don’t: Include version numbers in the filename. Use SharePoint version history.
- Don’t: Use ‘Final’, ‘Latest’, ‘Current’ in names. They become meaningless instantly.
- Don’t: Use spaces or special characters when alternatives exist. Underscores and hyphens are safer.
Common mistakes
- Treating naming as cosmetic. It’s structural. Names affect search, sort, Copilot accuracy, and team productivity.
- Inconsistency across team members. Five users naming files five ways defeats the convention.
- Renaming retroactively without a plan. Big bulk renames break links and bookmarks if not communicated.
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What’s the biggest naming mistake in SharePoint?
Encoding metadata in the filename. HR-POL-2026-Q1-RW-v3.docx isn’t a filename — it’s a database row jammed into 30 characters. Every piece of information in that string should be a metadata column instead, and the filename should read ‘Remote Work Policy’. This single shift fixes the majority of naming problems organisations have.
Should I use spaces or hyphens in SharePoint names?
Spaces, for readability. SharePoint handles spaces correctly throughout (in URLs they’re encoded as %20, which is transparent to users). Hyphens work fine but make names look more code-like. Save hyphens for genuinely hyphenated terms (‘end-to-end’, ‘follow-up’); use spaces between separate words.
Should I use abbreviations in SharePoint names?
Almost never. ‘HR’ might be universally understood today, but ‘OD’ (Organisational Development), ‘PMO’ (Project Management Office), and ‘IM’ (Information Management) all fail the new-starter test. Spell out the words. If the full term is genuinely too long, that’s a sign the concept needs a shorter plain-English alternative — not an abbreviation.
Should I capitalise SharePoint names?
Yes — Title Case for names of things. ‘Remote Work Policy’ not ‘remote work policy’. Capitalisation makes names more scannable and signals ‘this is a proper noun / artefact name’. Reserve lowercase for genuinely casual content (e.g. a quick note); reserve ALL CAPS for nothing — it reads as shouting.