Why is ms-formtable not being applied to SP2016 on premise list item form tables?

Question

I have been using Mark Rackley's code to move fields into custom forms and it has been working quite nicely in 2010/2013, but we just upgraded the database on our internal portal from 2010 to 2013 and then to 2016 and I've noticed some strange stuff going on.

In list forms that were already existing, everything works as before, but when I create a new list form, the table that contains the formlabel and formbody cells does not have the ms-formtable class applied. This, of course, breaks the code. I have written a workaround that tests for ms-formtable and handles things if not found, but it's not pretty and I would just like to know if there is something I could be doing wrong. Has anyone else seen this issue and better yet, does anyone have any idea what's the cause and solution?

Answer 1

I have checked the script created in the link you provide, and I see that no CSS is applied by code.

I think there are two options:

1. In the second line of the script, there is a display:none on .ms-formtable, so maybe, you should delete that line because the script isn't finding that class.

2. Maybe, in SharePoint 2016, .ms-formtable doesn't exist anymore, so the script doesn't work as expected. If this is the cause, you should be receiving an error in your browser Console (Web Inspector), reporting that .ms-formtable isn't found, failing in the line 11:

   $(“table.ms-formtable td”).each(function(){

   So, somehow you should have to insert the .ms-formtable CSS class, so that the script wouldn't fail, or modify the script to take another CSS class as reference.

Answer 2

Here's the work-around:

function moveFormFields(checkForOrphans) {
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Loop through all the spans in the custom layout and move all SP fields into the custom form //
// if they have a corresponding span with a data-displayName attribute specifying their id.    //
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
$("span.replacementForm").each(function() {
    //get the display name from the custom layout
    var displayName = $(this).attr("data-displayName");
    var elem = $(this);
    //find the corresponding field from the default form and move it
    //into the custom layout
    if ($("table.ms-formtable td").length > 0) {
        $("table.ms-formtable td").each(function(){
            if (this.innerHTML.indexOf('FieldName="' + displayName + '"') != -1){
                $(this).contents().appendTo(elem);
            }
        });
    } else {
        // SP2016 has stopped applying the ms-formtable class to the form fields table, thus breaking the code above.
        $("td.ms-formlabel nobr").each(function(){
            // Not using indexOf because we do NOT want to hit on partial matches.
            if (this.innerHTML == displayName || this.innerHTML == displayName + '<span class="ms-formvalidation"> *</span>') {
                $(this).closest("td").next("td").contents().appendTo(elem);
            }
            // Hide this row even if there was no destination to move to.
            // This allows us to hide fields by not moving them to a visible location.
            $(this).closest("tr").css("display", "none");
        });

        $("[id*='gobackbutton1']").closest("table").parent().parent().css("display", "none");
        $("[id*='savebutton1']").closest("table").parent().parent().css("display", "none");
        // The next line was removed because it was hiding the file upload selector, so
        // instead we hide each row in the loop above rather than hiding hte entire table.
        // $("td.ms-formlabel").closest("table").css("display", "none");
    }
});

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// For setup and troubleshooting, enable checkForOrphans to see if we     //
// correctly set up all of our fields.  If set up correctly, there should //
// only be popups for fields intentionally left off of the form.          //
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
if (typeof(checkForOrphans) == undefined || checkForOrphans == null)
    checkForOrphans = false;
if (checkForOrphans) {
    $("table.ms-formtable td").each(function() {
        if (this.innerHTML.indexOf('FieldName=') != -1){
            var start = this.innerHTML.indexOf('FieldName="') + 11;
            var displayName = this.innerHTML.substring(start, this.innerHTML.indexOf('"', start+1));
            alert(displayName);
        }
    });
}

}