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Imtech Fields Explorer

Imtech Fields Explorer is a tool that can help you during the development process while working with fields. The tool allows you to explore properties of the fields contained within the (Site Collection) Content Types and Lists.

To explore the existing fields simply input the URL of your Site (Collection) and press Enter (or click ‘Open’): you will then be able to choose whether you’re interested in the Fields belonging to Content Types or Lists.

Imtech Fields Explorer

To improve the performance of the tool I have chosen to extend the TreeNode class. The extended node contains the IsLoaded property which determines whether the child nodes have been loaded. The child nodes are being loaded after selecting a node for the first time. Like this there is no overhead of loading items you don’t need.

Imtech Fields Explorer: Available Content Types

For the convenience the available Content Types are grouped.

Imtech Fields Explorer: Field's Properties

After selecting a Field all of its properties will show in the property grid. I think the most useful are:

  • FieldValueType
  • Id
  • InternalName
  • SchemaXml
  • StaticName
  • Title
  • TypeAsString 

I have found out that I need those properties quite often during SharePoint 2007 solutions development.

Download Imtech Fields Explorer v1.1.0.0 (47,6KB) 

Posted 08-24-2007 7:36 PM by Waldek Mastykarz

Comments

Mike Walsh wrote re: Imtech Fields Explorer
on 08-25-2007 7:25 AM

I've added this to the WSS v3 FAQ as a free program. That's usually what downloads presented in this way are.

But I'm a bit confused by the ImTect in the name and in the screens.

Could you please confirm that it IS a free product !

(If not I'll re-post it to the commercial products section - in that case how much does it cost?)

Mike Walsh

Waldek Mastykarz wrote re: Imtech Fields Explorer
on 08-25-2007 7:39 AM

Hi Mike,

It is a free product and the professionals can use it without any restrictions.

Sorry for the confusion.

6 Links Today (2007-08-25) wrote 6 Links Today (2007-08-25)
on 08-25-2007 10:20 AM

Pingback from  6 Links Today (2007-08-25)

Mike Walsh wrote re: Imtech Fields Explorer
on 08-27-2007 12:04 AM

Thanks Waldek. (Dzienkujen)

Mike

SharePoint, SharePoint and stuff wrote Tool Imtech Field Explorer
on 08-27-2007 3:48 AM

Mit dem Imtech Fields Explorer lassen sich die Eigenschaften von Feldern in SharePoint Inhaltstypen und

Oskar Austegard wrote re: Imtech Fields Explorer
on 08-28-2007 4:23 PM

Nice, ,but how does it differentiate itself from other tools such as SharePoint Spy and SharePoint Manager?  The latter is my new favorite as it actually supports UPDATES to properties, not just reads...

In any case the plethora of tools that all do more or less the same thing is a clear sign that MS fell down on providing us with the dev tools we really need.  So much for 'Developers, Developers, Developers'...

Waldek Mastykarz wrote re: Imtech Fields Explorer
on 08-29-2007 1:01 AM

Oskar: good point. Fields Explorer offers slightly a piece of the SharePoint Manager's functionality. Still it works much faster (as it process only a piece of SharePoint). And what about no updates: as we use the tool during the development stage we only need the list of properties and their values: any changes we make have to be stored in the solution anyway.

Jeff wrote re: Imtech Fields Explorer
on 07-31-2008 1:00 PM

Just an FYI, we ran this in our environment and we were getting a "could not find site" error when we put in the URL and clicked open. I tracked it down with reflector and the sharepoint logs and found that the interactive account I was running the Fields Explorer software under needed to have access to the SharePoint databases in SQL.

I ended up giving my account read, write, and execute to SharePoint_Config and the other SharePoint created databases with the long name. It started working after that.

Hopefully that helps someone else!

Jeff wrote re: Imtech Fields Explorer
on 07-31-2008 1:01 PM

P.S. Great tool! Helps a lot when trying to figure out internal field names for use with the Content Query Web Part.

Thanks for creating this!

Waldek Mastykarz wrote re: Imtech Fields Explorer
on 08-09-2008 1:22 PM

Thanks for your feedback, Jeff. I'd appreciate it if you could repost it on my new blog @ blog.mastykarz.nl/.../imtech-fields-explorer-v1300-get-to-work-with-your-content-types-and-site-columns

Abhishek Thakur wrote re: Imtech Fields Explorer
on 01-20-2009 1:30 AM

Ca we update list columns properties like allowDelete property of title field Or allow Lookup property?

Waldek Mastykarz wrote re: Imtech Fields Explorer
on 01-20-2009 4:24 AM

As long as the property isn't ReadOnly you should be able to update it. You should however be really careful while modifying properties of fields provisioned by SharePoint.

XristosK wrote re: Imtech Fields Explorer
on 02-11-2009 5:06 AM

Hello,

I use imtech explorer to fill the values in <commonfileds> in cqwp and I have an issue with a field: In imtech, the internal name is _x03a0__x03b5__x03c1__x03af__x03, while (showing all fields),   the name should be _x005F_x03a0__x005F_x03b5__x005F_x03c1__x005F_x03af__x03

I could send you more information if you want.

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