r/sharepoint • u/ripl81 • 1h ago
SharePoint Online Bulk Update SharePoint Choice Metadata from Excel (Multiple Values per Document)
Hi everyone,
This is my first time posting in the Reddit Sharepoint Community, so please bear with me if this is a basic SharePoint question.
I'm definitely not a SharePoint expert, and I've been trying to figure this out for days without success.
My Scenario
I have a SharePoint document library that contains several SOP documents.
I created a metadata column called Keywords and configured it as:
- Choice column
- Allow multiple selections = Yes
My goal is to assign approximately 10 keywords to each document.
The Challenge
Doing this manually is extremely time-consuming because I have to:
- Open each document's properties.
- Click the Keywords field.
- Select all 10 keywords individually.
Since I already have all the keywords mapped to each document in an Excel file, I was hoping there would be a way to bulk update these values.
What I've Tried
I tried copying and pasting the values directly into the Keywords column from Excel using various separators:
- Comma (,)
- Semicolon (;)
- Hash (#)
For example:
Keyword1, Keyword2, Keyword3, Keyword4
or
Keyword1; Keyword2; Keyword3; Keyword4
I even tried
#Keyword1; #Keyword2; #Keyword3; #Keyword4
However, SharePoint always returns:
"No results match for your entry."
My Questions
- Is there a way to bulk populate a multi-select Choice column from Excel?
- Can metadata updates be imported directly from an Excel spreadsheet?
- Is there a specific format required when pasting multiple values into a multi-select Choice column?
I'm looking for the most practical solution that avoids manually selecting 10 keywords for every document.
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! 😊
Regards,
Rodrigo
