How to hide folders from a document library

Did you know you could hide folders from the document library? Let’s say you have a library with a pretty complicated folder structure. Maybe you added some metadata columns to it to help you organize it better, or maybe you are just so sick of folders, you want to hide them all and essentially flatten the structure and view just the files. Whatever the reason is, below is a quick way to hide folders from the library.

Please note that I am not talking about restricting user access to certain folders here. This post is about suppressing the folders – making them invisible (but leaving the contents intact).

Hide folders using “Folders view” feature

1. Go ahead and create a new view called “No Folders View“
2. Scroll down all the way to Folders section and choose “Show all items without folders” radio button
3. Click OK

The library will now display all the documents without the folders (folders suppressed)

Recommendation

This might be a great trick to use if you have your folder library that you migrated over to SharePoint and now converted it to metadata. By hiding the folders, you will now benefit from metadata views and filtering, just like a normal metadata document library.