Do you need to make it more convenient for people to see relevant items from a SharePoint list on your page? Similar to the SharePoint Document library web part for document libraries, the List web part lets you display items from a SharePoint list on your SharePoint page. In this installment of our Modern SharePoint Web Parts series, well look in detail at the List web part and the List properties web part which you can connect to it.
List web part
Upon adding the List web part to a page, youre prompted to select a single list from the current SharePoint site. Note that you can only select from custom lists; lists such as events or tasks are not available to this web part. You can also click the Edit icon to view all the properties you can configure in the List web part.
In the configuration pane, in addition to selecting a list, you can select a list view you may have already built within the SharePoint list. Any sorting, filtering, grouping, or formatting you have applied to the list view will be displayed in the List web part. If you only wish to display the contents of a certain folder in the web part, you can add a folder path.
And just like the Document library web part, you can choose the vertical size based on number of items either autosized, Small [about 5 items], Medium [15], or Large [30]. If you limit the size of the web part in this way, its not really obvious youre not seeing all items until you hover over the web part and the vertical scroll bar appears. But then you can scroll through all of the items in the list theyre not actually a limited number.
The final option available in the configuration pane is to enable the command bar or not. Thats the area above a modern list which lets people add new items or export to Excel, or if an item is selected, they can share, copy a link, or delete it. Also from the command bar, you can switch or edit views if you have permission to do so. Note that this is a subset of the commands available in the actual list itself [for example, Flow, move, and alerts arent included], but there are probably enough commands for most peoples use on a SharePoint page. However, if its not enough, the See all link takes you to the underlying list on a new browser tab, where you get the full feature set.
Finally, you can add your own title to this web part, by typing within the web part itself. In the example below, were displaying a grouped view, weve hidden the command bar. and we named the web part Products.
List properties web part
NOTE: The List properties web part is only available in SharePoint Online, as it relies on dynamic data connections.
What if you need a way to view more columns in your list without making people scroll horizontally? Heres where the List properties web part comes in. You connect it to a List [or Document Library] web part on the current page, and then when a person selects an item, the properties of that item are displayed in the List properties web part. We wrote in detail about this web part connection capability in April 2019 when it first became available, and as of this writing [September 2019], it works the same way. So well refer you here to that Web Part Connections article. Basically to connect it, you click on the little ellipses in the upper right of the configuration pane, click Connect to source, and then youll see a list of other web parts on the page to which you can connect the List properties web part.
Among other things, youll be able to select which of the lists columns you want to display. So placing the List properties web part to the right of a List web part on a page gives a nice way to allow users to see more details about a given item.
The List properties is not a very good way to display a column which contains an image, however. For that, youll probably want to connect an Embed web part to your List web part, as shown at the end of the web part connections article mentioned above.
We hope this article helps make it easier for you to display the SharePoint list data your team needs to see!
By the way, if youd like to add other types of formatting to your list view, or even display data graphically, take a look at our Data Viewer Web Part!