Change SharePoint list settings using PowerShell - Part 1: General and Versioning

Let’s say that you have 100 team sites created and being used with a document library called Shared Documents available in each site. You are then asked to change the versioning settings on each Shared Documents library in every one of those 100 sites to create major and minor versions. To resolve this requirement for any new document libraries and sites created in the future, you can wrap up the changes into list and site templates. However, doing this will not affect any of the 100 existing document libraries already being used.

Enter PowerShell. In part one of this series, I will show you how you can change the General and Versioning Settings of a list. First, we’ll change the settings of a single list in a single site. Whilst this is easy enough to do in the UI and unlikely to be used in a script, it will give you an idea of how the script works:

#Get the site and list objects
$web = Get-SPWeb http://portal/team
$list = $web.Lists["Shared Documents"]

#Make the list changes
$list.Title = "Documents"

#Update the list and dispose of the web object
$list.Update()
$web.Dispose()

The script above gets a document library called “Shared Documents” in the site “http://portal/team”, sets a new title for the document library to “Documents”, and updates the settings for the list. If there is more than one setting to change, we could have any number of settings defined under the “#Make the list changes” line and they will all be updated by the $list.Update() command.

The script below would certainly take a lot longer to do in the UI, as it walks through each site in the “http://portal” site collection, changing the title and description of the document library called “Shared Documents” in each site – all you have to do is tell the script the relevant site collection URL, list name, and which settings you want to change on each list with the name specified:

#Change these variables to your site URL and list name
$site = Get-SPSite http://portal
$listName = "Shared Documents"

#Walk through each site in the site collection
$site | Get-SPWeb | ForEach-Object {

#Get the list in this site
$list = $_.Lists[$listName]

#Make the list changes
$list.Title = "Documents"
$list.Description = "Use the Documents library to store shared files"

#Update the list
$list.Update()
}

#Dispose of the site object
$site.Dispose()

The table below shows the other General and Versioning Settings we can also change, with snapshots of the same settings from the list admin UI. To use any of these settings from the table, copy them into the script above, underneath the “#Make the list changes” line.

General Settings

List Name	The following command will change the list display name (note, this will not change the list URL): $list.Title = "Documents"
List Description	The following command will change the list description: $list.Description = "Use the Documents library to store shared files"
Navigation	To configure the list so that it shows on the Quick Launch (left-hand site navigation), use this command: $list.OnQuickLaunch = $true Change the $true to $false if you want to remove the list from being shown on the Quick Launch.

Versioning Settings

Content Approval	This command will change the list to require approval for all items: $list.EnableModeration = $true Change the $true to $false if you want to set content approval to No.
Document Version History (settings and wording can be different between document libraries and lists, as annotated in the script code)	There are a few settings on this section, which I have annotated in the commands below: #Create a version each time you edit an item in this list (lists) #Create major versions (document libraries) $list.EnableVersioning = $true #Create major and minor (draft) versions (document libraries only) $list.EnableMinorVersions = $true #Keep the following number of versions (lists) #Keep the following number of major versions (document libraries) $list.MajorVersionLimit = 5 #Keep drafts for the following number of approved versions (lists) #Keep drafts for the following number of major versions (document libraries) $list.MajorWithMinorVersionsLimit = 5
Draft Item Security	This setting uses a numerical value to determine which option is set: Any user who can read items = 0 Only users who can edit items = 1 Only users who can approve items (and the author of the item) = 2 For example, to configure this setting for “Only users who can edit items”, as pictured above, use this command: $list.DraftVersionVisibility = 1
Require Check Out (document libraries only)	This command will change the list to require documents to be checked out before they can be edited: $list.ForceCheckout = $true

In Part 2 of this series, I cover how to use PowerShell for configuring the Advanced Settings of a list.