Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 Best Practices

Other Best Practices Concerning Documents and Document Libraries

Regardless of where the document is hosted, several document library best practices are worth mentioning. First, we do not find that a pervasive use of folders in a document library is either helpful or desirable. While an occasional use of folders might help categorize documents, folders are really just a way to apply metadata to a document without having to create a column in the library. Their usability is generally not thought to be helpful in the document library interface. Having said this, for performance reasons, we favor the use of folders over filtered views because folders are twice as fast at bringing up a list of documents as opposed to filtered views of a larger list. ...