02 | October | 2012 | Are you a user?

This was driving me nuts. I had a custom list in SharePoint 2010 and I wanted the new item form to NOT open in a dialog. No matter what I did, it kept opening in a dialog.

Then I stumbled upon what was causing my issue! Whenever the list was displayed in a datasheet view (which was my default), the new item form would always display in a modal dialog.

List displayed in datasheet view.

Create a new entry…

…and modal dialog is displayed (notice no master page "chrome”).

Change to standard view…

…and the form is opened up in single page mode (notice master page “chrome”).

What’s up with that?

An interesting thing to note is this problem also exists with Calendar lists. If you display a calendar list in anything other than a normal list view, the “Launch forms in a dialog” will not be respected when set to “No.”

Again, if we set “Launch forms in a dialog” to “no” and view the calendar in “Calendar” view…

…and attempt to create a new event while in this view…

…the form opens in a dialog.

If we change to the “All Events” view and attempt the same thing…

The form is opened in a new page (no dialog).

Perhaps this is the designed behavior, but if it is, I would recommend renaming the option to “Launch forms in a dialog when showing items in standard view.”

The description of the option would lead one to believe there might be times when a dialog would not be displayed when you would expect it to be displayed…not the other way around.