No more “Show More” in Tasks lists

I meet frequently with the request to turn off the new “Show More” feature at the SharePoint 2013 Tasks lists. The next screenshot shows the default new task form as displayed after page load with the limited set of fields, the “Show More” button is highlighted:

After clicking on that button, the remaining fields are displayed, as shown below:

Surprisingly, the solutions I found on the web (like this, this or this one) try to solve the issue and expand the fields automatically on the client side using JavaScript – that I consider rather hacking – instead of solving the real reason of the problem.

In this blog post I would like to introduce a few other solutions to the problem, that are worth considering instead of the JavaScript approach.

As you probably know, the various list item forms (NewForm.aspx, DispForm.aspx and EditForm.aspx) use the ListFormWebPart web part to render the item in new, display and edit mode. Which rendering template the web part uses is specified by its TemplateName property. If no TemplateName is specified on the page itself for the web part, the default value is used:

As you can see from this code, the template is read from the configuration of the content type of the item being edited / displayed.

You can display this value in the case of a standard Tasks list using the next PowerShell script:

$web = Get-SPWeb http://YourSharePointSite
$list = $web.Lists["Tasks"]
$ct = $list.ContentTypes[0]
$ct.DisplayFormTemplateName

The output of this should be “TaskForm”, and you get the same result for the other two properties (NewFormTemplateName and EditFormTemplateName).

In the case of other list types the form used is the “ListForm”. So if you would like to use the standard form layout without the “Show More” button, you can simply replace the form template for the content type assigned to the list (solution 1).

$web = Get-SPWeb http://YourSharePointSite
$list = $web.Lists["Tasks"]
$ct = $list.ContentTypes[0]
$ct.DisplayFormTemplateName = "ListForm"
$ct.NewFormTemplateName = "ListForm"
$ct.EditFormTemplateName = "ListForm"
$ct.Update()

Note: The change affect only the given list, but no other Tasks lists, as we change the property only for the local copy of the Task content type.

Alternatively, you can open the form using SharePoint Designer, and set the TemplateName property of the ListFormWebPart web part explicitly (solution 2):

<TemplateName xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2/ListForm">ListForm</TemplateName>

But what’s the difference between the TaskForm and ListForm templates? Don’t we lose any functionality if we simply switch the form template? What`s included in TaskForm and what in ListForm?

These questions can be answered if we have a look at these templates in DefaultTemplates.ascx (located in folder [SharePoint Root]\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES).

If we look for the templates having id="ListForm" and “TaskForm”, we find that there are several differences between them. Just to name a few, the ListForm uses a standard ListFieldIterator control, while in the TaskForm we find a TaskFieldIterator – SpecifiedListFieldIterator combo, and various combinations of an EditDatesSelector control. I had not yet time to investigate the purpose of the latter one, but having a look at the code of the TaskFieldIterator and its base class DividingListFieldIterator (via Reflector or dotPeek), this control itself seems powerful enough to find an other way to eliminate the “Show More” button.

In one of my former blog posts I’ve already described the process how can we customize a standard SharePoint rendering template. A altering an out-of-the-box file is definitely not recommended, you should create a new .ascx file (for example, call it CustomTaskForm.ascx) in the CONTROLTEMPLATES folder, and copy the content of the rendering template with id="TaskForm" into the file, and include the same Control, Assembly and Register headers as found in the DefaultTemplates.ascx. Alter the id property of the template to CustomTaskForm.

Add the ShowExpanded="true" attribute to the TaskListFieldIterator control in the file (solution 3).

<SharePoint:TaskListFieldIterator ShowExpanded="true" …

Save the changes and execute IISRESET.

Open the list item forms (NewForm.aspx, DispForm.aspx and EditForm.aspx) and assign the new custom rendering template to the ListFormWebPart.

<TemplateName xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2/ListForm"&gt;CustomTaskForm</TemplateName>

Save the changes again. The item should be displayed now with all its fields without the “Show More” button.

If you want to keep the button, but would like to include / exclude other fields into / from the top, you can change the value of the TopFields property. Mandatory fields of the content type and the fields specified in this property should be displayed by default without clicking on the “Show More” button.

For example, we could include the Priority field on the form, if we include ;#Priorty in this property.

<SharePoint:TaskListFieldIterator TopFields="…Title;#StartDate;#DueDate;#AssignedTo;#Priorty;#PercentComplete;#RelatedItems;#Description" runat="server"/>

Of course, in this case we should remove the ShowExpanded="true" we just included in the former step!

After saving the changes and an IISRESET, the forms should include the Priority field as well.

By studying the constructor of the TaskListFieldIterator class, we can find two further ways to show the form with all the fields.

We can pass the Expanded=1 in the request query string like NewForm.aspx?Expanded=1 (solution 4), or change the column order of the list content type, for example, switch the order of the Priority and Task Status fields (solution 5).

In both cases the form will be displayed with the fields expanded automatically. Of course, in the second case the field display order will differ from the standard one, but it’s only a minor difference.

I hope you find a method from the above described ones that fulfills your needs, and can easily eliminate the “Show More” button if you wish, without any kind of JavaScript magic.