Sharepoint 2010 site definition and Lookup column

Question

I have created a custom list definition with a lookup field using Visual Studio. Everything is working perfect.

After that I created a site definition using Visual Studio and added this custom list to the site definition using the onet.xml like this:

<List FeatureId="128987af-fc74-4707-9b4f-79b0a342b352" Type="10000" Url="Lists/Risiko_mgmt/AllItems.aspx" QuickLaunchUrl="/Lists/Risiko_mgmt/AllItems.aspx" Title="Ereignisse"></List>

Deployment was successful but when I create the site definition it says invalid fieldname pointing to the GUID of the lookup field.

What am i doing wrong?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Creating lookups through GUIDs is unreliable and can break if you migrate or upgrade Content Databases. Here is a Powershell script that will fix the lookup for you:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Sharepoint.Powershell
Function Fix-LookupColumn ($webURL, $listName, $columnName, $lookupListName)
{
  #Get web, list and column objects
  $web = Get-SPWeb $webURL
  $list = $web.Lists[$listName]
  $column = $list.Fields[$columnName]
  $lookupList = $Web.Lists[$lookupListName]

  #Change schema XML on the lookup column
  $column.SchemaXml = $column.SchemaXml.Replace($column.LookupWebId.ToString(), $web.ID.ToString())
  $column.SchemaXml = $column.SchemaXml.Replace($column.LookupList.ToString(), $lookupList.ID.ToString())
  $column.Update()

  #Write confirmation to console and dispose of web object
  write-host "Column" $column.Title "in list" $list.Title "updated to lookup list" $lookupList.Title "in site" $web.Url
  $web.Dispose()
}

Fix-LookupColumn -webURL http://Site -listName "ListName" -columnName "ColumnName" -lookupListName "LookupList"