Brainlitter » Office 2016 and the mystery of the missing Document Information Panel

Office 2016 and the mystery of the missing Document Information Panel

Doing a quick scour of the Interwebs, it seems nobody has really posed this question or answered it. A little surprising too… So let’s do this…

What

The Document Information Panel (DIP) is missing/unavailable/gonzo/absent/gone/AWOL in Office 2016. Yep, it ain’t there. Usually Microsoft “deprecates” this functionality and provides some time to get used to the alternative (and sometimes the alternative is … well, nothing). And sure enough they have. But they did it one month before Office 2016 was released and without a lot of fanfare. Reference: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3092185

So What

Good lord. What!? Why!?

I personally haven’t heard an answer but I suspect it is a few things:

  1. As cool as it was to be able to punch metadata right into the ribbon in Office, it wasn’t consistent in other places that Microsoft places a ribbon (SharePoint, for example) and other Office products didn’t support it either
  2. The DIP when in partnership with SharePoint could be customized using InfoPath – and well, InfoPath has a murky future (at best)
  3. Likely the main reason is that the functionality/usefulness it provides (ability to fill out required fields quickly and before committing a save) is still there but in what I’d argue is a better place. The Office Backstage. You know, that place where all sorts of other properties about the document you are working on can be found (workflow, versioning, checkins, etc.). In fact, I’m going to go as far as to say despite this jarring/all of a sudden enforced change, I’m already AOK with the new world order

Now What

So what’s the experience? Particularly if you have documents in a SharePoint library (DocLib) that have required metadata? Well, let me show you in pictures…

Image 1 – I have a SharePoint Online (Office 365) DocLib with two columns, both requiring properties. I went with a choice column and managed metadata field

Image 2 – When saving the document back to SharePoint, the Ribbon informs me I have some properties to update

Image 3 – Now I’m in the Backstage where I can update my metadata properties (see A and B) but it’s also the natural place to deal with any other document properties, settings, choices, etc. as well such as identifying the version (C) checking it in (D), or managing other aspects of the document (E)

10 responses to “Office 2016 and the mystery of the missing Document Information Panel”

  1. hi,
    thanks for your post…
    Im looking for update document property while editing the file in online.
    Is it possible?

    Tnx,

  2. Hi Sean, timely post. When I have a management metadata field that is filled in. The backstage panel shows as blank until I hover over the field then it shows me what’s filled in. Mind you I’m currently running 365 proplus 16.0.6568.2036. But, is this happening to you as well?

    On another note, I tend to agree with you on the new placement but this is going to cause me some heartburn in terms of change management within my org, just when I thought the upgrade to 2016 was going to be somewhat seamless.

    1. Hey Marcus, it is definitely a bit of a mess. Because we have different content types, it is worse than that. I get a pop up for the Content Type field (like we used to in 2003). Definitely gonna be a surprise for some folks.

  3. Hi Sean – I can’t seem to get a Person/Group column to work appropriately within the document properties. The address book button and the check mark button are not responding at all. Have you seen this happen?

  4. Hi Sean, we’re still struggling from the fallout of the removal of the DIP from Word 2016 here in the UK (and elsewhere I guess). There hasn’t been a recent response from Microsoft on the ‘Word.uservoice.com’ website to the continuing shout-out by end-users who have spent ages integrating Word and SharePoint in the past (https://word.uservoice.com/forums/304924-word-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/9748581-missing-document-panel-in-word-2016?tracking_code=b013a8445407d8656db57cb7c9d15342). As an MVP, are you aware of anything at all happening to move this dilemma forward? We’ve had a couple of Clients of ours decide to not move to Word 2016 as it completely messes up the integration options. And that message is true of others if the Comments are to be believed.

    Have you come across anything which to your mind would help make Word 2016 and SharePoint integration more sensible? Is there any mileage in considering using Add-Ins to make this work? I did wonder if we could somehow force the issue if we were using Word Online by injecting some script / code etc, but I’m not at all certain if that is possible or to be desired.

    Any thoughts you have would be gratefully received.

    Alan C.

    1. Hi Alan, in recent builds (I forget how long ago but no more than 2 months ago … we are on first release), we definitely started seeing the metadata starting to appear in a useful form in the backstage – a little smoother, more seamless. The DIP is gone for sure but it’s not the same and not likely to be the same. Does it not work for your users to use the properties page? The term store integration is definitely better lately (what build are you on?).

      For a quick preview of what I see: https://www.screencast.com/t/fPMxWcLvh

  5. Hi,
    just in the process of moving over to Office 365. Is it possible to get the people picker fields to work in Properties?
    We’re running workflows etc and you would chose persons in the DIP.
    Also we have Excel spreadsheets that uses scripts to add results data into the DIP so it actually shows in SharePoint. Might maybe just be to update the script so it would come in the properties?

    This must cause a lot of issues for a lot of people.
    Apparently other businesses uses their options more than Microsoft otherwise they probably wouldn’t have removed the DIP.

  6. Hi there, I’ve just been moved onto Word 2016 and found this thread due to the pains of trying to save Word documents to SharePoint… This is now a really clunky process where it used to be relatively easy.
    Our document library in SharePoint has a mandatory field in which, even if I try to pre-empt being prompted for this info in Word, the field isn’t listed in the Properties until Word has initially attempted to do it’s thing with SharePoint! So there is a lot of going back and forth, and then having to reselect where you want to save the document and naming it… again (I won’t get started on Quick Access replacing Favourites… Gah!)

    Has anyone found a way to at least see ALL the properties fields in Word prior to clicking save, to try and eliminate some of the extra steps?

  7. I have found that the properties are missing when I go to save a word doc, even though there are required fields and I am saving into a sharepoint library. The DIP function has disappeared and the properties/Show All Properties option somehow randomly has now stopped showing the sharepoint metadata options. This means you try to save, it fails, it asks you for required metadata, the required metadata is not available to select, save fails, you start again, you give up and save the file offline and then have to ‘upload’ into SharePoint. Really sucks. Real set back. Not ideal. Any help appreciated. Microsoft get your stuff together eh? You are going backwards not forwards in terms of usability.

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