I searched for hours on this one when I came across a few good posts. The first one I came across talks about using a custom form in display mode to show all of the history from an “Append Changes to Existing Text” field. Here is a link to that post:
http://unitedsupplyco.sharepointsite.net/publicfacing/bensblog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=41#Comments
The author suggests that he/she doesn’t know how to make this work in a dataview webpart. When I tried this, I got this error:
object reference not set to an instance of an object
I would have likely lived with a custom form as the solution, however since it didn’t work for me, I continued to search. Next I found a post that basically gives the same solution but this time in a dataview webpart! That post is here:
Awesome, except I was still getting an error. Both posts suggest the solution is to replace the xsl line:
<xsl:value-of select=”[your column name]” disable-output-escaping=”yes” />
with this line:
<SharePoint:AppendOnlyHistory runat=”server” FieldName=”[your column name]” ControlMode=”Display”/>
You should, obviously, replace the [your column name] with the name of your SharePoint column. Since this was the same solution in both posts (one in a custom form webpart and the other in a dataview webpart), I knew my error message must be from something I’m missing.
Then I figured it out through trial and error. When I replaced my column name – I took the name from the xsl line – in my case it was {@Project_x0020_Notes} – and put it in the new non-xsl line. That is when I get the error message. So I tried removing the curly brackets – no luck. I tried removing the @ sign – still no luck. Then, in a total shot in the dark, I tried using the SharePoint friendly name “Project Notes” instead of the xsl formated name Project_x0020_Notes.
BAM! That worked and now I can display all the appended comments in a dataview webpart! Hope that helps you!
Hello, maybe somebody has solution for SP 2010 ?
Fantastic! Switching from the internal name to the friendly name did the trick! I’ve connected two web parts so the user can select, from a list of projects on the left, which one she wants to see details for in a web part on the right. (The right side web part contains the field for which I want history.)
Thanks for the tip, dsackr!!
I can confirm that it does work in SP2010.
I used this:
with the “friendly name” as suggested: That is when I get the error message. So I tried removing the curly brackets – no luck. I tried removing the @ sign – still no luck. Then, in a total shot in the dark, I tried using the SharePoint friendly name “Project Notes” instead of the xsl formated name Project_x0020_Notes.
My final working line looks like this:
Nice and simple! Thanks for the post!
Justin
Hello,
Have you got this working in SharePoint 2010?
I have added the line and don’t get an error message when I preview the page – just doesn’t display the appended text field as expect.
Cheers,
Chris
@Chris, I haven’t tried yet! I’ll update the post if I get it working…