Number of Lines for Editing
The
Number of Lines for Editing setting determines how many lines are
displayed in the editing box for the text. This can be any number from
1 (where only one line will be displayed, but users can scroll down or
up in the box) to 1,000. This setting does not affect the length of the
text that can go into the column, just the appearance of the editing
box (refer to Figure 8).
Tip
It is recommended to keep the
number small in the Number of Lines for Editing setting so that the
column editing box doesn’t take a huge amount of space in the editing
form.
Specify the Type of Text to Allow
In the Specify the Type of
Text to Allow setting, you can specify the type of text that can be
entered in the editing box. The simplest option is Plain Text, which
allows just simple, unformatted text . The users do not have options to make any part of the text bold or a different font.
The next option, Rich
Text, enables the users to set formatting on parts of the text and set
the font, font size, alignment, color, and other kinds of formatting
that are common when writing rich text.
The last option, Enhanced
Rich Text, allows even more special formatting, such as making parts of
the text into hyperlinks, adding images to the text, and creating
tables.
Append Changes to Existing Text
The last option, Append
Changes to Existing Text, lets you configure what happens when someone
edits the value of the column in a list item or a file. The default
setting is No, which means that when someone edits the value, it just
changes to the new value. Users who then view the properties of the
list item or file see the new value, not the old one. If they want to
see the old one, they must open the list item’s or file’s version
history if versioning is configured in the document library.
Choosing Yes here changes how
the column is displayed when users view the properties of the list item
or file. Instead of seeing just the current value, users also see the
entire history of what the value was before, including who made changes
and when. This option can be turned on only when versioning is enabled
on the list or library because SharePoint must track the old versions
of the value to show this information.
When the Append Changes
option is enabled, the old entries and the current one appear under the
editing box for the column. If there are no old entries, that is shown
also (see Figure 8).
When
there are old entries, such as corrections to a value, they are shown
to a user viewing the item as a list of values, complete with who wrote
the value and when (see Figure 9).
When you are editing a list item
of a file, the list of values appears below the editing box for the
column, and the edit box it is empty (see Figure 10).
Choice Column
You can use a choice column
when you want users to choose from a list of options for the value of
the column in different configurations (for example, a list of regions
or countries, as shown in Figures 11 through 13), with different controls appearing to the user.
Choice columns enable you
to specify the values you want the users to choose from, and you can
configure them to allow the users to either make a single selection or
select multiple values from the list (see Figure 14).
