Stump the Panel: SharePoint Q&A

Without going into all the details of why...

I'm trying to figure out how I can define which column is used as the item selector (left pane) in the Preview Pane style. The default (and apparently only) option is the 'Title' column. Due to some downstream dependencies, this isn't working very well for me.

Has anyone figured out a way to do this?

Thanks for any help,
L

Are you saying you want to use a different column than title and you want to know how? Yes, have had this need on many occassions. Recently I built a workflow to populate the title column with the information from the other column (was a variable string of multiple columns, last name,first name actually) - but without SPD you can't do that.

I don't know of a way, short of copying your information from Title into another column and replacing it with the information you do want to display. You can't just pick which column.

@Kerri - yes, I want to use a different column. What I am using this list for is tracking companies and I'd like the selector to be the company name column. What I'm hearing is that I'm stuck unless I want to duplicate data in multiple columns. Yuck.

A little more detail: I was using the Title column for this (selector) and that was fine...until I tried linking my Contacts list to Outlook and noticed Company name wasn't coming through. I researched that problem and discovered that (apparently) you have to use the pre-defined 'Company' site column if you want to link to Outlook and have the data transfer - no field mapping is supported. I was using a lookup column to my Company list from my Contact list to manage the list of allowed companies.

I'm a relative novice here...I'm assuming SPD is SharePoint Designer. I have that installed. Is setting up a workflow as you mention below painful? Can you point me in the right direction for how to get started?

Thanks!

Creating a workflow with Sharepoint Designer is drop dead easy once you learn how. Here's a link to a video I made that will help you get started. http://www.screencast.com/t/ZmNkMDM4Y

Once you learn how to build a simple workflow with SPD, you can browse the list of actions that are available and start to expand your skills.

One quick tip: If you are creating a workflow that fires every time an item is changed, DO NOT USE the "Update List Item" on the list the workflow is attached to. Doing so will cause the workflow to fire again, and create an endless loop. Use "Set Field in Current Item" instead -- it will not fire the workflow again.

Keith Hudson
Sharepoint Mastery

That's only the case if you haven't patched your system. Workflows can no longer trigger themselves causing infinate looping. You need 2 workflows to be able to do that, using Update List Item is fine.