Creating a Custom View for a List in Sharepoint

You can filter and sort lists to easily view data - but you can also create "custom views" to quickly toggle between different preset filters and sorts.

This KB Article References: SharePoint
This Information is Intended for: Instructors, Researchers, Staff, Students
Created: 09/30/2016 Last Updated: 12/12/2023

You can customize any list or library to display only the content you want to see.  This is especially useful if the list has many columns and lots of data but you only want to see a portion of this data.  You can make this list view public for all users of the site or private just to you.  And you can designate if this view should be the default view. 

  1. Sign into Sharepoint and navigate you your site
  2. Open your list 
    1. Click on the gear at the top right, then Site Content
    2. Select your list from the bar on the right
  3. Click on List (gray toolbar, top left)
  4. Click Create View
    • There are several format types, choosing "Standard View" will allow you to scale down the current list to just specific columns
  5. When working with "Standard View" format, you can...
    • Name: name the view, and manage the default
    • Audience: choose whether this is a public or private view; you can also choose which columns to display and change their order
    • Sort: sort by a column (you can choose between ascending or descending)
    • Filter: you can choose to filter out rows based on information in a specific column 

You should avoid making a list public until you've viewed and corrected it. To edit the list view, click on the "List tab" again, go to "List Tools" and "Modify View"

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