Blog Archive ยป Changing the Title in a SharePoint Page

Changing the Title in a SharePoint Page

The following procedure is how you can change the title of a SharePoint ASPX page.

Start by editing the page in SharePoint designer – try to go into advanced mode.

If the file crashes designer – because SP Designer sucks – then use an alternate editor, such as notepad (what I did was get the file into edit mode in SPD – not advanced mode, because that’s what crashed it – and then copied the contents to another editor) editing it this way will exclude all the crap SPD injects into the HTML.

Again, if your SPD died, copy the code into another editor and make your changes (below).

Look for the following bit of code in your aspx file (whether that be a webpart page or a page layout, etc – note, you’re not changing a master page as part of this process, the master page will inherit what you change here).

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId="PlaceHolderPageTitle" runat="server">
<SharePoint:ListItemProperty Property="BaseName" maxlength="40" runat="server"/>
</asp:Content>

The line "<SharePoint:ListItemProperty Property="BaseName" maxlength="40" runat="server"/>" is what injects the dynamic name of the page. If you want to augment that, you can put text before and/or after it, and it will combine the text all together, such as below.

Example modification:

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId="PlaceHolderPageTitle" runat="server">
PreText <SharePoint:ListItemProperty Property="BaseName" maxlength="40" runat="server"/> PostText
</asp:Content>

Outcome Page Title:

PreText GeneratedPageName PostText

Alternatively, you can replace the entire dynamic text with a fixed value, and that will be used as the page title instead.

Example modification:

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId="PlaceHolderPageTitle" runat="server">
General Manager View
</asp:Content>

Outcome Page Title:

General Manager View

Once you’ve made your changes, return to SPD (assuming you were editing the file elsewhere, because it crashed) and right click on the aspx file (in the list view of the library contents), choose to edit the file in notepad, select the entire file, paste your entire changed file on top of the newly opened file, and save/close the file. Voila, you now have your changed page title in your SharePoint page.

6 responses to “Changing the Title in a SharePoint Page”

  1. No go. The page still shows the file name and you get an informational prompt (triangle with an exclamation point within a yellowish colored banner bar) that states:

    The current page has been customized from its template. Revert to template.

    Reverting back put the page back to what it was. If you don’t revert, that ridiculous bar stays in the unaltered page.

    1. This post was written for SharePoint 2010 (way back when 2013 didn’t yet exist). Are you trying to do this with SharePoint 2010 or 2013?

  2. I am struggling with these updates in SP2013.

    The “Title Bar Properties” does not update the title bar. Enabling the “title” property on the content type in the library does not update the page title. Editing the code as above, does not update the title bar.

    Any suggestions would be great. Thanks!!

  4. In SP 2013…This works to change the title, as displayed in the tab titlespace, for lack of a better word. BUT, it doesn’t work to change the title that is displayed on each page, below the global navigation…top left corner, to the right of where corporate logos are frequently seen in default templates.

    So I now have my intended custom page title seen on the tab label, but that old ugly filename is still shown as in large text as the page title; in my case as span id=DeltaPlaceHolderPageTitleInTitleArea

    Any idea what’s going on?

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