Sharepoint Lists vs. Sharepoint Libraries

Question

Fundamentally, what is the difference between the two? I'm in the really early stages of working out what's what with sharepoint and I can't seem to tell the difference between the two.

Answer 1

A library is "just" a special type of list where the focus is on the File linked to the listitem

Anything you can do with a list you can do with a library and then some

Answer 2

Here in this article we have discussed in details about what is the difference between list and document library. http://www.sharepointdotnet.com/2011/12/what-are-basic-difference-between-list_06.html follow the article it will help you.

Answer 3

Although in most of the UI and API they can be manipulated the same way, there are some significant differences between Lists and Libraries. The latter is a specialized type of the former.

Lists:

• Can have attachments
• Have major versions only
• Do not have Check-in/Check-out features

Libraries:

• Cannot have attachments (files are directly in the library)
• Have both minor (draft) and major (published) versioning
• Have Check-in/Check-Out
• Publishing Libraries can use Page Layouts
• Have Unique Document Ids out of the box

In code, you can always obtain an SPList from a SPDocumentLibrary but not the other way around.