Number of Lines for Editing
The Number of Lines for Editing setting determines how many lines are displayed in the editing box for the text. This can be any number from 1 (where only one line will be displayed, but users can scroll down or up in the box) to 1,000. This setting does not affect the length of the text that can go into the column, just the appearance of the editing box (refer to Figure 5).
Tip
Keeping the number small in the Number of Lines for Editing setting is recommended so that the column editing box doesn’t take a huge amount of space in the editing form.
Specify the Type of Text to Allow
In the Specify the Type of Text to Allow setting, you can specify the type of text that can be entered in the editing box. The simplest option is Plain Text, which allows just simple, unformatted text (refer to Figure 5). The users do not have options to make any part of the text bold or a different font.
The next option, Rich Text, enables the users to set formatting on parts of the text and set the font, font size, alignment, color, and other kinds of formatting that are common when writing rich text.
The last option, Enhanced Rich Text, allows even more special formatting, such as making parts of the text into hyperlinks, adding images to the text, and creating tables.
Append Changes to Existing Text
The last option, Append Changes to Existing Text, lets you configure what happens when someone edits the value of the column in a list item or a file. The default setting is No, which means that when someone edits the value, the value just changes to the new value. Users who then view the properties of the list item or file see the new value, not the old one. If they want to see the old one, they must open the list item’s or file’s version history, if versioning is configured in the document library.
Choosing Yes here changes how the column is displayed when users view the properties of the list item or file. Instead of seeing just the current value, user also see the entire history of what the value was before, including who made changes and when. This option can be turned on only when versioning is enabled on the list or library because SharePoint must track the old versions of the value to show this information.
When the Append Changes option is enabled, the old entries and the current one appear under the editing box for the column. If no old entries exist, that is shown also (see Figure 8).
When old entries exist, such as corrections to a value, they are shown to a user viewing the item as a list of values, complete with who wrote the value and when (see Figure 9).
When you are editing a list item of a file, the list of values appears below the editing box for the column, and the edit box is empty (see Figure 10).
Choice Column
You can use a choice column when you want users to choose from a list of options for the value of the column in different configurations (for example, a list of regions or countries, as shown in Figures 11 through 13), with different controls appearing to the user.
Choice columns enable you to specify the values you want the users to choose from, and you can configure them to allow the users to either make a single selection or select multiple values from the list (see Figure 14).