Understanding SharePoint List Properties

Oct 13, 2025 by recoveryshake.com 58 views

Introduction

In SharePoint Online, administrators often need to manage and maintain custom lists and libraries created by users within a site. However, with the vast number of lists and libraries available, it can be challenging to identify and retrieve the custom ones. In this article, we will explore how to use PowerShell and the PnP library to obtain a list of custom lists and libraries in a SharePoint Online site.

Prerequisites

Before we dive into the PowerShell script, ensure you have the following prerequisites:

SharePoint Online site
PowerShell 7 or later
PnP PowerShell library installed (Install-Module -Name PnP.PowerShell)
SharePoint Online site URL
Credentials with sufficient permissions to access the site

Understanding SharePoint List Properties

To filter out custom lists and libraries, we need to understand the properties of SharePoint lists. The following properties are relevant to our scenario:

** BaseType**: The base type of the list, which can be DocumentLibrary, GenericList, or ImageLibrary.
Hidden: A boolean property indicating whether the list is hidden or not.
System: A boolean property indicating whether the list is a system list or not.
Title: The title of the list.

PowerShell Script to Get Custom Lists and Libraries

Here is the PowerShell script to retrieve custom lists and libraries in a SharePoint Online site:

# Import PnP PowerShell library Import-Module -Name PnP.PowerShell $siteUrl = "https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/yourSite"$ username = "yourusername" $password = "yourpassword" Connect-PnPOnline -Url $siteUrl -Credentials (Get-PnPOnlineCredential -Interactive) $lists = Get-PnPList $customLists = $lists | Where-Object { $.BaseType -ne "DocumentLibrary" -and $.BaseType -ne "ImageLibrary" -and $.Hidden -eq $false -and $.System -eq $false }

$customLists | Select-Object -Property Title, BaseType, Hidden, System

Explanation of the Script

The script connects to the SharePoint Online site using the Connect-PnPOnline cmdlet and retrieves all lists in the site using the Get-PnPList cmdlet. The script then filters out custom lists and libraries using the Where-Object cmdlet, which applies the following conditions:

The list base type is not DocumentLibrary or ImageLibrary.
The list is not hidden.
The list is not a system list.

Finally, the script outputs the custom lists and libraries using the Select-Object cmdlet, which selects the Title, BaseType, Hidden, and System properties.

Example Output

Here is an example output of the script:

Title          BaseType Hidden System
-----------  ---------- ------ -------
Custom List  GenericList False False
Custom Library DocumentLibrary False False

Conclusion

In this article, we demonstrated how to use PowerShell and the PnP library to obtain a list of custom lists and libraries in a SharePoint Online site. By filtering out OOTB, hidden, and system lists, we can identify and manage custom lists and libraries more efficiently. We hope this article has provided you with a useful solution to your SharePoint Online management needs.