Document sets are essentially metadata-enabled folders, ideal for standardizing and bundling documents in a predefined folder structure, allowing people to manage their related assets as a single entity. Imagine HR onboarding a bunch of new hires. On their first day, HR creates a record for each person, then shares the item with the respective new hire. Now, each new hire has their own folder with a welcome message, a few security policies to sign, and access information for the company intranet, with everything structured consistently for each and every new hire.

Now, consider HR initially processing each of these new hires. HR will need to store their resume, offer letter, compensation info, benefit selections, profile picture, etc., all nested in their respective employee folder. Though, in this scenario, HR only needs the folder structure, not any pre-populated documents as part of a template structure. Unfortunately, document sets require that a default folder have a default document added to it. Though, the default document could be filtered out in the view and “hidden”. This gives the impression that only the default folders were created.

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Summarizing the ask, HR needs another document set created with the following template folders. Only the folders. They don’t want any default documents:

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Again, to provision the default folders in a document set, a default document needs to be added as a template file. Giving SharePoint Online (SPO) what it wants, consider creating a few “placeholder” text files, one for each folder to be created in the document set. Unfortunately, each “placeholder” file has to be unique:

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Now, with the “placeholder” files available, create or update a document set and open its Document set settings:

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Scroll down a bit, then expand the Default content section. This is where each “placeholder” file is added to a default Folder. Before saving document set changes, Add as many default folders as necessary:

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With a few “placeholder” files added, the document set’s Default content should look something like the following:

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Now, the document set is ready for use. Add it as a content type to a document library, if it wasn’t already added, then create a new record using this document set. As expected, the document set creates the folder structure and populated each folder with its respective “placeholder” file. Worth acknowledging, these “placeholder” files could be automatically cleaned up using Power Automate, Logic Apps, or PowerShell, or they could be “hidden” using view filers without any fancy customizations:

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Edit the current library view, or whichever views will need to be modified, and scroll down to the Filter section. Specify that this view should show items of every Type that aren’t “txt”:

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And voila, no “placeholder” files are listed. Note, this isn’t ideal if text files are expected file types. Instead, choose a different, unlikely file type, like “ini” to filter out and hide:

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Conclusion:
Document sets are great for easily provisioning folder structures with default content, but there are times when the default files aren’t wanted. Choose an unlikely file type to add as default content, then filter and show all files except this file type to hide the “placeholder” files when advanced customization isn’t available.

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Medgar Evers

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