Programmatically display all items in SharePoint document library as a flat list without folders

Let’s assume that we have a document library with a deep folder structure. Sometimes it’s very hard and time consuming to locate documents under those folders.

Is there a way to display all files as a flat list without folders? It’s very simple, we only need to do some modifications to the view

If we have to automate the behavior, we can use either C# or PowerShell to do the needful. In both cases we need to update SPView.Scope property.

C# 

1. var viewCollection = newDocLib.Views;
2. const string viewName = "File List";
3. var viewFields = new StringCollection
4.          { "Type", "LinkFilename", "Modified", "Editor" };
5. var filesOnlyView = viewCollection.Add(viewName, viewFields, string.Empty, 5, true, false);
6. filesOnlyView.Scope = SPViewScope.Recursive;
7. filesOnlyView.Update();
8. newDocLib.Update();

PowerShell

Following script will create the view for all document libraries in all site collections within a specific web application

1. Get-SPSite -WebApplication "http://sp13:8080" -limit All | ForEach-Object {  
2. foreach ($w in $_.AllWebs){
3. foreach($docLib in $w.Lists | where {$_.BaseTemplate -eq "DocumentLibrary"})
4.   {
5.     #create list view
6.     $viewCollection = $docLib.Views
7.     $viewName = "File List"
8.     $fields = $docLib.Views["All Documents"].ViewFields.ToStringCollection()
9.     $itemOnlyView = $docLib.Views.Add($viewName, $fields,"", 30, $True, $False)
10.     $itemOnlyView.Scope = "Recursive"
11.     $itemOnlyView.Update()
12.     $docLib.Update()        
13.   }
14. }
15. }

This will create a new view called “File List” which displays all files in the library without folders