How to Show Different News in Different Places with the SharePoint News Web Part

To show different news in different places on a SharePoint page, add a Choice column such as Category to the site’s Site Pages library, tag each news post with a value, then add one News web part for each value and filter it by Page properties. Company news can sit at the top of the home page and blog posts in their own feed underneath, all from one library of news.

Every page, news post and news link you create on a site ends up in Site contents, then Site Pages, so a column on that library is a property of every post. In my demo on a Contoso landing site, one column with two values gave me a “News and updates” feed under the hero and a “Blog posts” feed below it. I recorded the video in 2023, so where SharePoint’s screens have moved since, the steps below use the current names.

Before you start

• Edit rights on the site. You need to be a site owner to add columns to Site Pages and to edit the home page.
• Use a Choice column. The filter matches the value exactly, so a fixed list of choices keeps every post spelled the same way. If you haven’t added metadata columns before, how to add metadata columns to a SharePoint library covers the column types.
• Watch the lookup column limit. When a News web part’s source is This site, the Site Pages library must have fewer than 12 lookup columns. It starts with 6 hidden ones, and features like audience targeting add more. If you hit the limit, choose Select sites as the source and pick the current site instead.

How do you tag news posts with a category?

1. Create the column. I created a site column so it could be reused in any library on the site: the settings gear, Site information, View all site settings, then Site columns and Create. Mine was called Contoso category, a Choice column with two choices, News and updates and Blog posts. If you only need it in Site Pages, you can add the column straight to the library with + Add column instead.
2. Add it to Site Pages. Go to Site contents, open the Site Pages library settings, and under Columns select Add from existing site columns. Pick your column and select OK.
3. Show it in the view. In the library, select + Add column, then Show/hide columns, tick your column and select Apply. Save the view so it stays.
4. Find the news posts. Regular pages and news posts sit side by side in Site Pages. Show the Promoted State column the same way and filter on it. In my demo, published news posts showed 2 and regular pages showed 0, and some of the items I’d tagged weren’t appearing in the feed because they were regular pages.
5. Tag in bulk. Select Edit in grid view and set the category on each post, then exit grid view.
6. Republish. Changing the column gives each post unpublished changes, and the News web part only shows the published version. In my demo the first web part came up empty until I selected the eight posts I’d tagged and published them in one go from the library.

How do you set up a News web part for each category?

1. Open the page, select Edit, then the + where you want the feed and add the News web part.
2. Select Edit properties (the pencil). Under news source, choose This site, or Select sites if the news comes from more than one site.
3. Under Filter, choose Page properties, select your column, set it to equals the value you want (News and updates, in my case), and pick a layout.
4. Add a second News web part underneath, give it its own title (I called mine Blogs), and filter it on the other value.
5. Republish the page.

On my home page, the top web part then showed only posts tagged News and updates and the lower one only Blog posts. The other filters (title, recently added or changed, created by, modified by) work the same way, with any layout: Top story, List, Side-by-side, Carousel or Tiles.

How do you use news links for blogs, decks and videos?

A news link is a news item that points somewhere else. Select New, then News link, paste a URL, and SharePoint fetches a title, a thumbnail and a description, all of which you can change before you select Post. It’s stored in Site Pages like any post, so you can tag it and it lands in the feed you’ve filtered for.

News links don’t have to point at news. In my demo the Blog posts feed carried articles from a public website, a PowerPoint deck the sales team had just finished and a recording of the monthly Q&A, the last two stored in SharePoint. Each showed as a normal news card, and selecting it opened the deck or played the video. For the two files, I shared each one with People in Contoso at view only first, pasted that link into the news link, changed the thumbnail and set Contoso category before posting.

Watch the video

Agree the categories before you add a second News web part

Once one column drives every feed on the home page, that column is part of your intranet’s structure, and I’d treat it that way from day one. A post with no category, or with a value no web part filters on, is published and sits in the library but appears in none of the filtered feeds. Nobody gets an error. I’d decide the list of values with whoever owns the home page before the second web part goes on, keep it short, and add a Site Pages view that filters on an empty category so untagged posts get caught.

I’d also keep the values about what the content is (company news, blog posts, resources, events) and leave who it’s for to audience targeting. Put both in one column and every new audience needs a new value and another web part. How I set up audience targeting on a home page is in building a personalised SharePoint intranet home page.

For news links, check access before you post. The card shows in the feed, but the deck or video behind it keeps its own permissions, so someone without access selects the card and lands on an access request. I’d use news links to announce a resource, then keep the resource itself in a library people can browse. If you need a whole page of rolled-up documents or videos, the Highlighted Content web part suits that better than a news feed. For the bigger picture of where columns like this fit, see why your SharePoint needs an information architecture before AI.

What to watch for

• Check the button says Post. News posts show a Post or Repost button; regular pages show Publish or Republish. If yours says Publish, you’ve made a page, and it won’t appear in a News web part.
• No filters on recommended news. Since September 2022, filter options aren’t available when the source is Recommended for current user.
• See all needs enough posts. The See all link only appears when there are more published posts than the web part is set to show.
• Organise overrides date order. Under Organize you can pin posts into numbered positions. Pinned posts show to everyone, whatever their audience.

Frequently asked questions

Can one News web part show news from several sites? Yes. Set the news source to Select sites and pick the sites, or choose All sites in the hub if the page is on a hub site. The site picker lists sites associated with the hub, your frequent sites and your recent sites.

What’s the difference between a news post and a news link? A news post is a full page you write in SharePoint. A news link only holds a URL, a title, an optional thumbnail and an optional description, and opens the linked page or file when someone selects it. News links aren’t available in SharePoint Server 2019.

Why is my news post missing from the News web part? Check that it was posted rather than saved as a draft, that it’s a news post and not a regular page, and that its metadata matches the web part’s filter. Then check the web part’s news source includes the site the post lives on. With This site as the source, Site Pages also needs fewer than 12 lookup columns.