Alec Tang

Restore list form web part for EditForm

Posted by Alec on Wed, 20 Jan 2010, in Sharepoint   

Yesterday I spent the whole day finding on the Internet about how to restore the list form web part of my edit form as I accidentally deleted it and could never get it back from the Closed web parts, nor could I get it back by resetting the file to site definition in Sharepoint Designer. It is really important to remember that the original edit form, display form and new form should never be deleted, but kept as hidden if we had to customise them.

What happened after I deleted my edit form, caused the edit link to disappear in the display page, nor could I edit properties of any item, or it will just redirect to the AllItems.aspx page. So, to retrieve the edit form back, what we do is:

1. In Sharepoint Designer, open the EditForm.aspx and DispForm.aspx. Grab a copy of both files and paste them in Notepad for backup.
2. On EditForm.aspx, go to Designer mode, click on the spot behind your own edit form, and go to Insert -> Sharepoint Controls -> Choose Edit item form, assign the right list in the dropdown on top. That should put back the original edit form. Designer will render it as error but that's okay.
3. Next, on DispForm.aspx, copy the Display Form web part code in code behind, and then back to EditForm.aspx, find the code which Sharepoint Designer just inserted for you (the original edit form), and paste the DispForm code there. Don't go to the Design mode now!
4. Change the ControlMode from Display to Edit.
5. Change the FormType to 6.
6. Save the page. Try it on Sharepoint site to see if it is working. It should, if not then it's really cooked and you can try changing the Guid ID of the web part and ID.