Alain de Klerk – Alain's SharePoint Bloggings

When you create a new list or document library in SharePoint the Name you supply for your new list is also used to in the URL. Characters like spaces are replaced by their HTML equivalents (%20). Changing the title of the list afterwards is easy, so is changing the URL of an existing list. You just have to know where to look. This post explains how to change both the title and the URL of existing lists and libraries using several techniques.

Now, if you update the list Name to something else only the list Name is updated, the URL isn’t updated. I renamed the list from ‘New List’ to ‘Some other title’ but the URL still reads: “http://quahog/Lists/New%20Lists/AllItems.aspx”.

It is possible to update the URL of an existing list or document library without coding using (1) Windows Explorer or (2) SharePoint Designer

Windows Explorer:

Navigate to a document library in your site and open this document library in Windows Explorer.

Navigate to the list (or document library) using the Windows Explorer. Select the folder representing the list and rename the folder.

Now when you renamed the folder and navigate back to your site, only the URL is updated and the list’s Name will remain unchanged.

SharePoint Designer

Using SharePoint Designer you can both update the Name and the URL of a list separately. To update the URL of a list navigate to All Files and rename the list. This rename only affects the URL of the list.

If you want to change the Name of the list without change the title, navigate to Lists and Libraries and rename the list.

Summary

To summarize the results above, you can change both the Name and the URL of document libraries or lists separately using the SharePoint UI, the Windows Explorer or SharePoint Designer.