Enable a library or list as a catalog in SharePoint

Enabling a catalog in SharePoint.

Note: This content applies to SharePoint Online SharePoint Server 2016 SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise

If you want the catalog items on your publishing site to have friendly URLs, for example http://www.abc.com/mobile/mobile-accessories, you have to connect your publishing site to your catalog. Before you can connect to a catalog, make sure that you enable the library or list as a catalog.

Before doing catalog, you have to enable a library or list as a catalog, you have to activate the Cross-Site Collection Publishing feature on the site collection that contains the library or list.

1. Make sure that you’re a member of the Owners group on the site that contains the library or list that you want to enable as a catalog.
2. Browse to the library or list that you want to enable as a catalog, and then:
3. Select the LIBRARY tab, and then, on the ribbon, in the Settings group, select Library Settings.
4. Select the LIST tab, and then, on the ribbon, in the Settings group, select List Settings.
5. On the Settings page, in the General Settings section, select Catalog Settings.
6. On the Catalog Settings page, in the Catalog Sharing section, select the Enable this library as a catalog check box.
7. If you don’t want anonymous users to view and search this content, in the Anonymous Access section, select Disable anonymous access.
8. In the Catalog Item URL Fields section, in the Available fields list, select up to five fields that uniquely identify an item in the library or list, and then select Add.
   Note:  The selections that you make here will appear in the Catalog Item URL Format section when you later connect a publishing site to this catalog.
9. In the Navigation Hierarchy section, select the site column that’s associated with your tagging term set.
   Note:  You only have to make a selection in this section if you want to use managed navigation to display catalog content on a publishing site. The selection that you make will appear in the Navigation Hierarchysection when you connect a publishing site to this catalog.
10. Select OK.

Important:  Once you’ve enabled a library or list as a catalog, it’s important that you crawl the content source that contains the catalog. This happens automatically with continuous crawls, but you can also start a crawl of the catalog manually.