Creating a custom list form.

Quite often we need to customize the out-of-the-box list form for different purposes (e.g. changing the look and feel, hiding columns from users, etc). There are a few things to be careful of when doing this task.

• Be careful not to break the links (i.e. New, Edit, Display commands) by avoiding deleting the existing ListFormWebPart web part on the forms.

• Simply right-click on the ListFormWebPart and click ‘Web Part Properties’ option. Expand ‘Layouts’ and select ‘Close the Web Part’ and ‘Hidden’. Click OK to save the changes.
  

• If new file is created for custom list forms, then remember to right-click on the list name, select “Supporting Files” and change the appropriate forms for the “Item”, not the “Folder”. To select the Item content type, click on the “Content type specific forms:” drop-down list.*
  

• Before customizing the forms, be sure to make a backup of the list, either backing up the whole site using stsadm command or just saving the list as a template so that you can always recreate it if things go wrong.