Can a column have 2 column types e.g. “Person or Group” and “Lookup” in one column

Question

I am trying to create a sharepoint task list which has "Assigned To" column. The tasks are mostly assigned to employees in the organisation but certain tasks might refer to external vendors outsite of the Active Directory (just for employee's reference even if the vendor has no access/permissions to the project site)

Is there a way to have the "Assigned To" column with "Person or Group" column type also allowing you to specify your own values in this column with maybe "Single Line of Text" or "Lookup" column to a Vendor Contacts list?

Answer 1

Is there a way to have the "Assigned To" column with "Person or Group" column type also allowing you to specify your own values

No.

But you can create a workflow that can copy the Assigned To user to a Single Line of Text column. Your user could then pick someone from the People column, and the workflow will copy them to the text column, or then can just type a name in the Single Line of Text column.

The same with the Lookup column. A workflow could copy the selected value to a Single Line of Text column. Or if you use both, the workflow could copy the first non-blank People or Lookup column into the Single Line of Text column.

Answer 2

Work Around

I created a contacts list with

• 'Full Name'
• 'Title'
• 'Work Email'

All being Single Line of Text column type.

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I then created columns that only show up in the form

• 'Full Name' which references AD
• 'Job Title'
• 'Email Address'

All being 'Person or Group' column type.

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I created more columns

• 'Ext. Vendor Name'
• 'Ext. Vendor Job'
• 'Ext. Vendor Email'

All being 'Single Line of Text' to be filled in the form hidden in the list.

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I used workflow to populate 'Full Name' , 'Title' and 'Work Email' with conditions depending on if i was filling an employee contact or vendor contact.

Now i can fill in organization employees and also external vendors not in the AD into project contacts.

Lastly, i changed 'Assigned To' column type from 'Person or Group' to 'Lookup'. I looked up the 'Project Contacts' list and looked at 'Full Name' column. Now i can add employee contacts and external vendors into 'Assigned To' so as long as the contact exists in the 'Project Contacts' list