A Web Part is an individual component of content that can be placed on a SharePoint page, in either a zone in a Web Part page or in Rich Content areas of the Wiki Content page. Web Parts can be moved, added, and deleted, framed by borders and titles, and closed and reopened, depending on your need.
In a team site, you may place Web Parts on your home page for your users to read and access items from your apps, such as announcements, documents, links, calendars, and contacts. You can add text for additional instructions and images to enhance the collaboration experience.
The Web Parts used to show your List and Library apps are called List View Web Parts. Over the versions of SharePoint, the number and complexity of Web Parts have grown considerably. Some of these Web Parts can be used only if certain functionality is enabled in your site, such as Business Data Sources to use the Business Data Web Parts.
Other categories of Web Parts, such as Content Rollup Web Parts, provide the ability to feed data from lower-level sites to a site higher in the hierarchy, such as the home page of an intranet.
SharePoint 2013 has a familiar interface for selecting and inserting Web Parts. The interface is called the Web Part Gallery, and you see it whenever you click to insert a Web Part.
The Web Part Gallery first shows a list of Web Part categories, and when you click a category, you see all the parts contained in that category. When the Web Part name is highlighted, you can see a description as well as an example of each in the About the Web Part section before inserting it.
Follow these steps to insert a Web Part:
Make sure you’re in Edit mode of either the Wiki Content page or the Web Part page (click the Page tab and click Edit Page).
In a Wiki Content page, insert Web Parts into one of the Rich Content containers in the layout. In a Web Part page, insert Web Parts into one of the zones on the page.
In a Web Part page, click in a zone. In a Wiki Content page, click in a Rich Content zone, and then click Web Part on the Insert tab.
The Web Part Gallery appears.
Because a Web Part page can contain only Web Parts, the Insert tab buttons for text and images actually insert a Content Editor Web Part or an Image View Web Part, respectively, for those selections.
After you decide on a Web Part, you can add it to the page.
Either select the area from the drop-down list and then click the Add button or drag the Web Part name into the zone or Rich Content area you want to place it in.
You can also use the Add button under About the Web Part section to insert the Web Part into the zone or Rich Content section your cursor is in.
In a Web Part page, the About the Web Part section contains a dropdown list containing the names of all the zones on the page. You can select the zone and then click the Add button. In any case, the Web Part is placed on the page.
Modify the Web Part properties by clicking the Edit drop-down list (in the far right of the Web Part title) and choosing Edit Web Part.
By clicking on the Web Part, additional configuration options may appear in the Ribbon. (Skip ahead to the “Changing Web Part Properties” section, later in this chapter, for more about configuring Web Parts.)
Web Parts can be moved in a Web Part page or a Wiki Content page simply by dragging them from one zone or area to another.