Document ID feature - An overview

Extracted from the original post

The document ID feature allows you to refer to a document by a unique code, instead of a possibly unreliable URL. Once you have enabled this site collection feature you will see a 'Document ID' field included in the properties for a given document.

The most useful thing here? You can now refer to your document with the following link:

http:///_layouts/DocIdRedir.aspx?ID=xxx

Where xxx is the document ID. No longer do you need to worry about where the document actually lives, its URL, and this URL changing. You can use the document ID to locate the file across sites, site collections and even web applications.

Some interesting points to note:

• This feature also interacts with Document Sets well, in that an ID is assigned to the set, and the individual documents within that set.
• If you turn the service on, and want existing documents to feature IDs, then you will need to check them in/out.
• Only content types derived from the 'Document' content type will have unique IDs assigned.
• You can edit the code behind the number generation to change how SharePoint generates the unique ID.

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