Changing Order / Hiding Columns in New / Edit Forms
The default order of columns in New/Edit forms for lists and document libraries is typically the order they are added. In many cases you may want to change this order, or to remove columns from these forms.
Changing the column order is easy but the method depends on whether you have selected “Allow management of content types” for the list. See below if you have this option selected, otherwise you can:
- Open the list and select Settings + List Settings
- Select the “Column ordering” link under “Columns”.
- Use the “Change Field Order” form to change the order of columns.
You can only hide columns if “Allow management of content types” is selected! So, to hide, for example, the “Title” column you can:
- Open the list and select Settings + List Settings
- Select Advanced settings
- Click Yes for “Allow management of content types” and then click OK.
- From the list of content types, select the content type the column appears in, e.g. “Item”.
- From the list of columns for the selected content type, select the column (e.g. Title).
- Select Hidden and click OK.
Even if you have a single content type, selecting the “Allow management of content types” option does no harm, so this should work in all cases.
Note that when displaying the content type there is a “Column Order” link under the list of columns which can be used to change the order of columns.
In this example, “Title” is a required field, but you can still hide it. The form will allow the item to be created or updated even though a value has not been supplied.
Hi,
I am using WSS3.0. I want to be able to only allow read access to a field in a list for some users, but allow full read/write access for others. Apologies if this sounds straightforward, but I’m still learning WSS.
Thanks,
Darren
Darren
December 10, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Hide columns in SharePoint, it is simple.
Try this too,
How to hide columns in SharePoint
sara
October 12, 2009 at 10:19 am
Yes, this can be done with SharePoint Designer, and thanks for the post. There is, of course, a decision point to be considered when using SPD to modify pages, but if this is part of your development methodology, go for it! Nick
Nick Grattan
October 13, 2009 at 6:11 am
Darren,
SharePoint does not supply this functionality out of the box. Do a search in goole for ‘”column level security” sharepoint’ and you’ll find articles that describe the issues and some solutions.
Regards,
Nick.
Nick Grattan
December 11, 2008 at 8:27 am
Nick, as far as I can tell this “re-ordering” of fields for the new & edit forms doesn’t seem to work for Document Libraries
Andy May
December 12, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Andy,
The column ordering options seem to work when used against a document library (e.g. for edit properties within the browser etc). I notice, though, that the order of columns is not honoured when displayed in the SIP in Word 2007. Is this what you mean?
Nick.
Nick Grattan
December 16, 2008 at 9:29 am
Hi,
Thanks, this is what i want.
Senthil
December 16, 2008 at 10:23 am
i want to order the columns programmatically writing some code…. can anybody help me with any such mothod that reorder the columns of a list at runtime…
Arun
March 18, 2009 at 10:22 am
I just migrated a Sharepoint 2003 site to 2007 (MOSS). When we display/edit a list item, it is not displaying in the column ordering we have defined for the list. Any Ideas? Column ordering on views is working. I am using List Settings – Column Ordering but fields do not appear in the order I have set.
Nancy Forbes
September 1, 2009 at 2:31 pm
[...] Don't know why this worked. We went to this option in order to change some columns to hidden. (See http://nickgrattan.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/changing-order-hiding-columns-in-new-edit-forms/ if interested in hiding columns)Open the list and select Settings + List [...]
List Item Sort Order Not Working - SharePoint Forums
September 1, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Once we did the first 3 steps on this page, the column ordering started working. Thanks!
Nancy Forbes
September 1, 2009 at 9:40 pm
I’m sorry, not the very first 3 steps. These steps:
Open the list and select Settings + List Settings
Select Advanced settings
Click Yes for “Allow management of content types” and then click OK.
Nancy Forbes
September 1, 2009 at 9:42 pm
I’m a new user to SharePoint and I believe that I’m using a SharePoint 2003 site. Not migrating to 2007 anytime soon but would like to address whether or not I can change the field order in a list in 2003 and how.
Thanks
Nancy L
October 6, 2009 at 8:10 pm