Forum Discussion
Minus50DKP
Feb 27, 2020Brass Contributor
Renaming columns -> new name not showing for site members
Hi community, I noticed that in a recent created SharePoint Online site, that when I rename columns, I (as creator) see the new names, but every other site member see the original column names. ...
- Jul 24, 2020
Update July 2020:
I still had this issue with new sites and almost gave up on troubleshooting. I had a brainstorm with another SharePoint minded person and it became clear that the language template might be a thing.
When you visit a website, the language in which the browser is set determines the language in which the content is displayed. If the website offers content based on language of course. With modern browsers you have the option to support multiple languages, like spell check and browser interface. My native language is Dutch, but I set my browser to English to read Microsoft Docs in English (the machine translation is absolutely horrible).
Now back to SharePoint. I create a site, make content types and columns, create libraries and lists and all that in my English browser. Most of my colleagues all have browsers with their interface set to Dutch. And here's where things go wrong. All Dutch visitors see the columns in their old ("ugly") name. When I change the user's UI language to English, *poof* all columns are in the correct "fancy" names.
So in conclusion, I have to rename all columns in two different languages, and more if we want to support other languages for our visitors as well....
GorillaWarfare
Jul 30, 2020Copper Contributor
I am having the same issue here. Could you explain how and where do users need to change the language to display the correct names? I tried changing mine in the browser and in myaccount.microsoft.com to recreate the problem but I keep viewing everything correctly.
Also I was wondering if this issue could cause other problems. In my case, the sharepoint list is connected to some flows and the from is customized using powerapps.There are some weird bugs that happened only to the one user who sees the internal names of the columns...
thanks!
Minus50DKP
Dec 15, 2020Brass Contributor
Hi, just noticed your question, sorry. Don't change the language settings on the back-end (i.e. SharePoint, Office.com or Delve).
In Edge/Chrome you can change the language settings of your browser. The first language is used to tell the website that you visit in what language you want the content presented in. So if Dutch is your primary language, set it to Dutch.
If you have, for example, English branches of your office, and you want to create/rename columns, you have to change the language from Dutch to English and rename the columns again. I set Edge language to Dutch and Firefox (my main browser) language to English. This is the only way I know of to make sure that columns have the same visual name in both languages.
- Manjupatil130270Aug 17, 2022Copper Contributor
Minus50DKP Thanks for sharing this here saved lot of time for us am also facing same issue
I created List and columns without spaces in English and renamed it to user friendly in Japanese, but problem is Japanese clients are not able to see actual renamed column name its showing old English names for them please guide me solution if you found any latest. Thanks again
- Minus50DKPFeb 08, 2023Brass Contributor
I think Microsoft is aware of this issue. In newly created SharePoint sites there are options available to set the navigation links for specific languages, and also for new columns:
When I hover over the information icon, you see this:
But this is only for quick navigation links (the menu on the left) and is far from perfect. I noticed Microsoft is working on columns too, but it's not general available (as far as I know).
In Powershell you can create columns like this:
$Url = #URL of the site you want to modify $FieldName = #The name of your column that you want to present to the visitor $InternalName = #The name you give to create your column (and can't be modified) $DataType = #What kind of datatype you want to use for your column, ie 'Choice' to create a choicefield $Group = #The group (if applicable) that this column will belong to $Connection = Connect-PnPOnline -Url $Url -Interactive -ReturnConnection Add-PnPField -List $List -Type $Datatype -DisplayName $FieldName -InternalName $InternalName -Group $Group -Connection $Connection
(More info: https://pnp.github.io/powershell/cmdlets/Add-PnPField.html
But this will only be useful for one language. I haven't found a way to do this for N>1 languages
2 Years later, this is still a pain in the rear-end to manage.
- srosicJun 24, 2022Copper Contributor
Minus50DKP Thanks for sharing this info, it really helped me a lot! I changed the primary language to English, and everything works fine now!