How can Changing Order / Hiding Columns in New / Edit Forms in SharePoint 2010

The default order of columns in New/Edit forms for lists and document libraries is typically the order they are added. In many cases you may want to change this order, or to remove columns from these forms.

Changing the column order is easy but the method depends on whether you have selected “Allow management of content types” for the list. See below if you have this option selected, otherwise you can:

1. Open the list and select Settings + List Settings
2. Select the “Column ordering” link under “Columns”.
3. Use the “Change Field Order” form to change the order of columns.

You can only hide columns if “Allow management of content types” is selected! So, to hide, for example, the “Title” column you can:

1. Open the list and select Settings + List Settings
2. Select Advanced settings
3. Click Yes for “Allow management of content types” and then click OK.
4. From the list of content types, select the content type the column appears in, e.g. “Item”.
5. From the list of columns for the selected content type, select the column (e.g. Title).
6. Select Hidden and click OK.

Even if you have a single content type, selecting the “Allow management of content types” option does no harm, so this should work in all cases.

Note that when displaying the content type there is a “Column Order” link under the list of columns which can be used to change the order of columns.

In this example, “Title” is a required field, but you can still hide it. The form will allow the item to be created or updated even though a value has not been supplied.