Workplace Automation

Category: SharePoint

Determine internal name of SharePoint Columns with GUI

You have to determine the internal name of SharePoint columns, when you want to get the values of the items programatically or develop some apps with PowerApps. If you make use of display names of columns, you might not get the values of the columns, that’s why you should use the internal name of the columns, In this article I will show you how to do it by a step-by-step description.

Description

Browse to the list, where you want to get field internal name and open the list settings.

Scroll down to the SharePoint columns and click on the column, which you want to get the internal name of. In my example I want to check it for the SharePoint Column Deal Size.

After clicking on Deal Size, I am checking the URL in the adress bar. The part after Field= is the internal name for the column. In my case it is DealSize.

If you use special characters, you will notice, that it won’t be that easy to determine the internal name of the SharePoint columns. Let me show it to you for the column Delivery address (Customer). As you can see, it got _x0020 and some other placeholder, which are not guessable easily.

You might find intersting

If you want to create a column, consider the official article of microsoft: Create a column in a list or library – SharePoint (microsoft.com)

You can deterimine the internal name of a SharePoint Column programatically like this: Getting FieldValues of Items – SPO Scripts

June 20, 2021
Getting Fieldvalues of Items
Getting all values of all items

If you want to retrieve all fieldvalues of an item, you can use following steps. I am getting the opportunities of the sales department
- Connect to SharePoint Online with PNP. If you don’t know how to, check the post. I am connecting with the sales site
  
  Connect-PnPOnline -Url "https://devmodernworkplace.sharepoint.com/sites/Sales" -Interactive
- After connecting, get the list.
  
  $Items =Get-PnPListItem -List "YourList"
  
  I am using the list opportunities:
  
  $Items =Get-PnPListItem -List "Opportunities"
  
  If you don’t know what the internal name of your list is, you can make use of the cmdlet
  
  $Items = Get-PNPListItem | Out-Gridview -Passthru
After getting the items, you can get all fieldvalues like this:
$Items.Fieldvalues

Filter items by specific value

You can filter items like this. You have to use the key, which you get with $Items. FieldValues

Filter by Where Object

$Item = $Items | Where-Object {$_.Fieldvalues["KEY"] -eq "VALUE"}

I filter for items with the title Opp 2

$Item = $Items | Where-Object {$_.Fieldvalues["Title"] -eq "Opp 2"}

Filter by -Query Parameter

I have created a separate post for this. Check it out.

Getting only specific amount of Items

It might happen, that your list contains many items. In order to get only 1000 Items, make use of the parameter -PageSize

Get-PnPListItem -List "Opportunities" -PageSize 1000

Getting a specific value for specific item

First get one single item, either by filtering, or by using the index

You can use indexing with following method

$Item= $Items[INDEX]

For the first Item: $Item = $Items[0]

For the second Item: $Item = $Items[1] etc,

If you got a single item, you can get the fieldvalues like this:

$item.FieldValues.KEY

In my case I use the key “Product”

$item.FieldValues.Product

Or “Contact”

Example script to get all fieldvalues for all items
```
$Url = "https://devmodernworkplace.sharepoint.com/sites/Sales" 
$ListName = "Opportunities"

Connect-PnPOnline -Url $Url -Interactive
$Items = Get-PnPListItem -List $ListName

$Items.Fieldvalues
```
Example script to get all fieldvalues for a specific item
```
$Url = "https://devmodernworkplace.sharepoint.com/sites/Sales" 
$ListName = "Opportunities"

Connect-PnPOnline -Url $Url -Interactive
$Items = Get-PnPListItem -List $ListName

$Item =  $Items | Where-Object {$_.Fieldvalues["Title"] -eq "Opp 2"}

$item.FieldValues
```
June 16, 2021