SharePoint University

Hello All,

 I created a list and one of the colunm is "choice" type and have allow fill-in value checked. However, the text displayed when new list item is created is not very descriptive, so I was wondering if I can change the displayed text for the fill-in value section. Thank you in advance!

Calvin

You can note the option to fill-in as a part of your survey question. Does that help or am I completely missing what you're looking for?

~Anna

If I understand your question correctly, yes, and it's pretty easy to do.

1. Go to the list
2. Menu: Settings -> List Settings
3. Scroll down to the Columns section
4. Click the name of the column
5. Do your changes
• Change the column name
• Type a new description
• Set column to be required or not
• Choose kind of display
• Allow 'Fill-in' choices
• Set the default value
6. Choose OK button

Should take less than a minute. Hope that helps.
Mark
EndUserSharePoint.com

No, I think I understand what Calvin's problem is and I have the same one and would love any help. Basically, when you create a column that is set to 'choice', you can select, allow 'Fill in' choices. The default label for this when it is selected is: 'Specify your own value'

 If I understand correctly, can this label be changed i.e. from 'Specify your own value' to 'Other' (for example).

Thanks

Hi Calvin,

 Im facing the same problem here. I would like to change the fill in choice description to be something else.

Have you found the solution?

 thx

Hello there... did you figure out or happen upon a solution for this? In essence it seems so simplistic (to change the description of the 'allow fill in choice' from that bothersome "specify your own value"), but after searching today, I have yet to find the .aspx/.js with the reference.

Found this on line 9921 of \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\BFORM.JS:

var L_SpecifyYourOwn_Text="Specify your own value:";

FT

Thanks FT! And for those still running WSS 3.0 it's in  ..\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\ows.js  Line: 432

Problem solved

Is this the only way?  I can't convince my IT people to change this for my site as I don't have access to these files directly and only work through the web interface.

can anyone answer this, it is so f_ing annoying, i only want to change it in one specific field on a specific page

 using sp designer i have the aspx page for the form open but I can't modify the f_ing "specify your own value"

why the f isn't this customizable, why does microsoft have to be so stupid all the time

this is the only thing i can find in regards to this crp

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.webcontrols.basechoicefield.fillinoptiontext.aspx

 but how do i go about implementing it?

After changing this, and doing an iisreset, it still did not work... Any ideas? Has anyone tried this and it actually worked??

ok, so I got sick of seeing the Specify Your Own Value crap on the surveys and not being able to change it... So I wrote a little javascript hack to do it, and it seems to work fine.

What I did was create a new master page (I could not get it to work in default.master for some reason). Then added the hack to the new master page (which is identical to say default.master but with the hack added). Then I edited the newform.aspx and editform.aspx for the survey to point ot the new master page.

So I opened default.master (found in the _catalogs\masterpages folder) in SharePoint Designer. Go File, Save As and save as somethign like survey.master. Just before the </HEAD> end tag I added the following js code:

<script type="text/javascript">
 function changeSpecifyOwnValue() {

  var node_list = document.getElementsByTagName('input');
   
  for (var i = 0; i < node_list.length; i++) {
      var node = node_list[i ];  // NOTE: there is a space here after the i, if not a lightbulb was added... delete this
    
      if (((node.getAttribute('type') == 'radio') && (node.getAttribute('value') != 'DropDownButton')) || (node.getAttribute('type') == 'checkbox')) {
          if (node.nextSibling.innerHTML=="Specify your own value:") {
           node.nextSibling.innerHTML = "Other:";
          }
      }
  }    

 }
</script>

After this I added the function above to be executed in the body onload, so your body tag should look loike this:

<BODY scroll="yes" onload="BLOCKED SCRIPTif (typeof(_spBodyOnLoadWrapper) != 'undefined') _spBodyOnLoadWrapper(); changeSpecifyOwnValue();">

Then in SPD, open the site where the survey is. Open the newform.aspx and editform.aspx and change the master page. I had to edit it and then select the Pick URL, and go back to select the master page. That is it. This is only a hack that replaces the text, but it works. The only three spots I seen the "Specify Your Own Value" text was in the Choice option, and when you choose drop down, radio or check boxes. In all three cases the above seemed to work. If you can get this to work with the default.master please let me know...

Oh yeah... I take no responsibility if the above does not work, or breaks something...