Disabling Modal Dialogs for List Forms in SharePoint 2010
Modal dialogs are great! They reduce postbacks! They pop up!
And they may drive your users batty if they aren’t used to them. They can also get in the way if you want to understand the DOM for the forms while you are customizing them.
Modal dialogs are great if they serve a good UI purpose. In my mind, the folks who sprinkled them into SharePoint 2010 forgot to screw the top on tightly first. Many, many times, I’m finding that they simply reduce the amount of screen real estate available for the task at hand, requiring some really silly scrolling.
Luckily, there’s a setting for that. Under List Settings / Advanced Settings, there’s an option at the bottom you can change to help with this.
This will enable you to turn off the modal dialogs, even if its only temporary so that you can do your work. You can always turn it back on later. But you might not want to.
Marc, is there a way to change the default setting for all lists and libraries for “Launch Forms in a Dialog” to “NO”? (or maybe “Hell, NO!) Or do I have to make it part of my provisioning procedure to do it every single time I create a list or library, if I want to never see a modal dialog?
Keith:
The more I’m working with SharePoint 2010, the more I’m moving into your camp on the modal dialogs. I’ve asked around a little and I can’t think of an easy way to make “NO!” the default. It might end up needing to be some sort of code solution. If you do come up with something, I’d appreciate it if you could post it back here!
M.
Hi Marc, talking about the defaults – any way you found to set NO to Tabular Views as well? Geez, why doesnt MS make it possible for us to set our defaults as we want them. I have to reset every view to get rid of this annoying setting. I hope there is something I have not found yet. Thanks. Kerri
Kerri:
Do you mean the standard Tabular Views for List View Web Parts? AFAIK, there’s no way to set a default view type other than setting it actively, or changing the underlying Site Definitions. The latter would end up applying to the entire farm, though. What type of view would you prefer to be your default?
M.
Hi Marc,
do you know why this setting is not working when applied on Survey list?
Thanks!
Marek:
I just created a survey in a vanilla setup and you’re right; the setting simply doesn’t work. I’d call that a bug, and I’ll report it.
M.
How did the bug report go?
June 2013, and the bug is still there (we have all CU’s installed except for April 2013)
Crickets.
M.
Typical… We tried several times as well for other issues and got turned down even when the contact person clearly confirmed that in his opinion it was a bug. Being a gold partner doesn’t mean anything to them it seems.
In my case I added a jQuery script that will replace the onclick event of the button with a simple window.open command, and replace the href value with ‘#’. It works.
Kurt:
SharePointLand is littered with the detritus of workarounds.
M.
I know, it’s why I hate developing in Microsoft.
They never seem to provide a decent solution, it always involves some hacking and scripting, because it just never fits real business needs (back button in surveys, anyone?).
And then my manager wonders why it is so difficult to estimate a SharePoint project in terms of time.
I am stumped on this too- one list, when I set the setting to NO, the item’s dispform.aspx opens in a new window as expected.
On another list, the setting appears to have no effect and we still get pop-ups.
I cannot find any information anywhere as to which list types this setting WORKS for and which it does not. Are you aware of anything? What might make the setting ineffectual?
Nancy:
There are definitely some list types where the setting has no effect, but I’m not aware of any documentation on it. What types of lists have you tried?
M.
This was on a custom list…. although since I posted this, it seems that we can attribute the issue to something not working right in our move to SP 2010. The site in which it’s occurring was just upgraded and we have observed several other oddities that can’t really be explained. Thank you for your reply!!
We are seeing this Dialogs=’NO’ setting ignored on our SPF Calendar list
Brian:
There are several list types where that is the case, unfortunately. I call it a bug.
M.
I am the opposite from some and quite like them although I do see the issues with real estate. I am looking for a solution to open them up maximised. Opening them maximised and using http://spjsblog.com/2009/12/15/tabs-in-sharepoint-form/ this for tabs is quite an easy to implement solution for forms with a lot of fields.
Regarding turning it off for all lists then I think this can be done with powershell and also using ps you can I believe turn them off for other types of lists although don’t quote me on that.
Thanks Marc…That helped me a lot..
A co-worker is working on a survey. He does not want it to open in a dialog. So he set the radio button you mention to No.
It didn’t matter. SP 2010 went ahead and presented the survey in a dialog anyway.
Any ideas on how to force SP 2010 to believe him when he says he does NOT want a dialog?
That’s a “bug”, as far as I’m concerned and has always been there with surveys.
M.
With External Lists there is no option to set form behavior…forms always open in a popup. Can you suggest a method that will open them without popups?
@Brian:
I haven’t done much at all with external lists, so I don’t have any smart ideas on this one.
M.