The Announcements webpart (app or list) is a handy way of one-way communication on SharePoint.  It has a default expiry field that automatically moves expired items off the landing page.  But the default webpart itself isn’t very inspiring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nor when you drop it onto a Site Page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first tip is to change the view in the webpart itself.

Add the body, created by, created and expiry date fields so you can see more detail; I like to sort this by expiry date. This way if anyone says they didn’t know something, you can point them at your site and show them that it was added on X date, and displayed on the front for X days, so they have no excuse …. cos they’re supposed to go into SharePoint at least once a day right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How the expiry date field is supposed to work, is that once the webpart is on a site page; when an item expires, it automatically leaves the site page and goes into the background above.  But that doesn’t work by default, there’s a trick to it. First edit the page, then edit the webpart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The default view is Current View, change that to Summary View.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click OK on the webpart, then save the page, and ….. TA DA!  Notice how there are now only 2 items on the page, as apposed to the 4 in the default view above.  Now anytime you add an announcement and add the expiry date, it will just seamlessly work.  Add an alert to the team for new items and all your work here is done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to, you can add the expiry date to the view too, but that’s totally at your discretion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This works in SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online.