JSON column formatting - reference column not in view

Question

Hi we have Sharepoint online site using old template and switched list to use modern experience.

Problem is with JSON formatting, because some things do not work as expected.

1. Unable to use/reference any site column in fashion [$CustomColumnName] which are not used in the view. Error given is: Failure: CustomColumnName was not found on the data object.

2. Referencing column [$ID] gives two possible errors: empty like there is no data or Failure: Cannot read property 'valueOf' of null

I have tested out of the box examples from Microsoft site and many more and the behaviour is the same.

Does it have to do something that the site is not completely on modern design? Did you experienced this? Thanks

Linking also the same issue somebody else created, I have same behaviour. https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-column-formatting/issues/19

Answer 1

I just experimented and noted something odd that may be useful to you here.

I was trying to use view formatting to display the [$Created] and [$Author.title] fields as follows:

{
        "elmType": "span",
        "style": {
          "float": "left"
        },
        "txtContent": "='Created on ' + [$Created] + ' by ' + [$Author.title]"
      }

Essentially what I learned was, I had to make sure my underlying view included the "Created By" column, but didn't include the "Created" column. Any other combination produced an error of invalid date, or didn't render at all.

Hope that helps you or someone else.

Dear SharePoint Team, please fix :-)

Answer 2

Typical half-baked feature by Microsoft. SharePoint could be such a powerful tool, but it seems Microsoft do their best to handicap it's potential power at every given oppurtunity.