Hide form fields in SharePoint (Issue Tracking List)

Sometimes when building SharePoint solutions or creating custom lists you want to hide some columns from the new or edit form. But the default new and edit form are automatically generating the form fields with all the columns that are created for the list.

This can be done in three different ways. The first way to do this is to use SharePoint Designer and make a custom form field, there are a couple of good articles about this (but you should be aware of that this could in some cases cause problems with e.g. attachments not working properly without extra coding). The second way, and the easiest way, is with content type as I will guide you through today. This might on the other hand be the least flexible. The last way is by using PowerShell which I will get back to later in the article.

Start by going to your list that you want to modifye the form fields on, this could be any kind of list or library. In the list go to List Settings and then click on the Advanced List settings.

What you first need to do is to allow management of Content Types. Click on Yes and then Ok.

You will then return back to the List Settings page which now looks a bit different. You will see a new section called Content Type. In my example I have used an Issue list so what I have is the Content Type Issue like shown in the picture below. 

What you see now is a list of all the Site Columns that is connected to the Content Type Issue. This could have been any kind of Content Type, default or custom made that has default or custom made Site Columns.

By clicking on any of the columns you are able to do some modifications to the column. In the Column Settings section you have three options. Required, Optional and Hidden. By Selecting Hidden the form field will not show up in forms. You should however note that this makes the form field hidden both in the NewForm.aspx and the EditForm.aspx forms.

(Service Unavailable) Could not load all ISAPI filters for site/service. Therefore startup aborted.

Hi,

After running the Sharepoint products and technologies configuration wizard successfully, the central administration site page opens up.

( We were installing MOSS 2007 on 64 bit machine)

But in my case it was giving the following error

“Service Unavailable”

Checking into event log gave the following information

<!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--> <!--[endif]-->Could not load all ISAPI filters for site/service. Therefore startup aborted.

and

<!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--> <!--[endif]-->

ISAPI Filter ‘C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_filter.dll’ could not be loaded due to a configuration problem. The current configuration only supports loading images built for a AMD64 processor architecture. The data field contains the error number. To learn more about this issue, including how to troubleshooting this kind of processor architecture mismatch error, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=29349.

Searching for it the solution that I found was the following

// Disabling the 32bit mode for your web site.

cscript C:\inetpub\adminscripts\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32bitAppOnWin64 0

and then the following

// Registering ASP.NET 2.0 as the default framework for that web site

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727>
aspnet_regiis.exe -i

This resolved the issue for me!!

SharePoint 2007 colour (color) calendar

The in-built calendar view is SharePoint 2007 is a heck of a lot better than the one in 2003 but it still lacks a feature requested by many customers - the ability to colour (or color for our US friends) code the entries like you can in Outlook.

In SharePoint 2003 the calendar was rendered entirely using Javascript so it was a question of modifying the schema.xml file for the list to output the relevant parameters and then overiding an ows.js function to ensure the colours got rendered. However in 2007 the calendar view is generated from code, specifically a bunch if classes like SPListView, SPCalendarView etc. Lots of this class heirarchy is marked as sealed or internal so it is not easy to try to inherit and change the behaviour. Plus lots of the code is obfuscated too.

First of all I created a standard SharePoint Calendar list. Then I added a Choice column called Category and put the following values in the choice field.

Appointment
Birthday
Business
Important
Vacation




Secondly I created a calculated column called CatTitle set to the following formula as seen in the image,

=Category & "|||" & Title

You could make these site columns if you wish to re-use elsewhere.



Finally change the calendar view on the list so that the display field for each of day/week/month view is the CatTitle field.



Now we need to insert some javascript to edit the titles so that they category and pipes are removed and the entries are coloured in. Edit the calendar page (Site Actions -> Edit Page) and insert a content editor web part UNDER the calendar list view. Paste the following javasript into the source view. Make the web part hidden.

 <script>  
 var SEPARATOR = "|||";  
 var nodes, category;  
 nodes = document.getElementsByTagName("a");  
 function getObjInnerText (obj)  
 {  
   return (obj.innerText) ? obj.innerText : (obj.textContent) ? obj.textContent : "";  
 }   
 for(var i = 0; i < nodes.length; i++)  
 {  
   if(getObjInnerText(nodes[i]).indexOf(SEPARATOR) != -1)  
   {  
     UpdateCalendarEntryText(nodes[i]);  
     var foundNode = nodes[i];  
     var trap = 0;  
     while(foundNode.nodeName.toLowerCase() != "td")  
     {  
       foundNode = foundNode.parentNode;  
       trap++;  
       if(trap > 10)  
       {  
         break; // don't want to end up in a loop  
       }  
     }  
     var colourinfo = GetCalendarColourInfo(category);  
     if(colourinfo.bg != "")  
     {  
       foundNode.style.background = colourinfo.bg;  
     }  
     // try and update the text colour if we can TD/A/NOBR/B/#text  
     if(colourinfo.fg != "")  
     {  
       try  
       {  
         // there should only be one anchor tag  
         childNodes = foundNode.all;  
         for(var j = 0; j < childNodes.length; j++)  
         {  
           if(childNodes[j].nodeName.toLowerCase() == "a")  
           {  
             // found anchor tag  
             childNodes[j].style.color = colourinfo.fg;  
             // set the NOBR tag as well to set the time if it is shown, but set it on the B tag for month view  
             if(childNodes[j].children[0].nodeName.toLowerCase() == "nobr")  
             {  // month view has an extra b tag surrounding the text  
               childNodes[j].children[0].style.color = colourinfo.fg;  
               if(childNodes[j].children[0].children[0].nodeName.toLowerCase() == "b")  
               {  
                 childNodes[j].children[0].children[0].style.color = colourinfo.fg;  
               }  
             }  
             break;  
           }  
         }  
       }  
       catch(e) {}  
     }  
   }  
 }  
 function ColourInfo(bg, fg)  
 {  
   this.bg = bg;  
   this.fg = fg;  
 }  
 function UpdateCalendarEntryText(anchorNode)  
 {  
   var children = anchorNode.childNodes;  
   for(var i = 0; i < children.length; i++)  
   {  
     if(children[i].nodeType == 3 && children[i].nodeValue.indexOf(SEPARATOR) != -1)  
     {  
       var parts = children[i].nodeValue.split(SEPARATOR);  
       category = parts[0];  
       children[i].nodeValue = parts[1];      
     }  
     else  
       UpdateCalendarEntryText(children[i]);  
   }  
 }  
 function GetCalendarColourInfo(desc)  
 {  
   var colour = new ColourInfo("", "");  
   var trimmed = desc.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g, '') ;  
   switch(trimmed.toLowerCase())  
   {  
     case "appointment":  
           colour.bg = "#ffd266";  
           colour.fg = "";  
           break;  
           case "birthday":  
           colour.bg = "#ae99dc";  
           colour.fg = "";  
           break;  
           case "business":  
           colour.bg = "#8aabe0";  
           colour.fg = "";  
           break;  
           case "important":  
           colour.bg = "#e77379";  
           colour.fg = "";  
           break;  
           case "vacation":  
           colour.bg = "#fffa91";  
           colour.fg = "";  
           break;  
     default:  
     {  
       colour.bg = "";  
       colour.fg = "";  
     }  
   }  
   return colour;  
 }  
 </script>  

You should now have a coloured calendar! Month, week and day views should appear coloured. Remember that if you place a calendar web part on a site that you will need a hidden content editor web part containing the javascript as well.

If you want to change the categories and colours, then simply add or change entries in the choice column and change the function in the Javascript accordingly.

In an ideal world this would be some sort of deployable feature, perhaps custom list definition. I will have a look at doing this at some point if I get time....