Checking In Multiple Documents At Once SharePoint 2007

If you have users that have uploaded multiple documents and your document library is not configured as in this article, all of the uploaded documents may appear as "checked-out". This seems to be a little known fact about document libraries and is a frequent "gotcha" for SharePoint.

This can leave you have somewhat of a dilemma on your hands. Especially if they do like my user did and check in over 150 documents. Each document will appear with a little green arrow - which means it is checked out and therefor cannot be seen by anybody else.


If the user opens the document and saves it, it immediately gets checked-in. However, you would not want to have to explain to a user that they have to do this on 150+ documents. That doesn't help your adoption curve.


You can use the "Content And Structure" screen to move around mass documents, and even move lists from one site to another.

Head to "Site Actions" / "Site Settings" (or "View All Site Settings") and then under "Site Administration" you will see "Content And Structure".

You can drill down into your items in a windows explorer type fashion and then select all by clicking the layered squares icon next to the "type" column header. You actions menu will then give you choices like check-out (if checked-in), check-in (if checked-out), move and copy.

You can actually move an entire list from one site to another using this same method. This makes an administrators life MUCH easier - but isn't widely known about.