Person Column in SharePoint Online list or document library

In this SharePoint Online tutorial, we will discuss the Person column in SharePoint Online list or document library. I will explain, how to add a Person column in SharePoint Online list or document library, and also we will see, how to set a default value to a SharePoint list person field.

Here we will work in a SharePoint Online list, the same way it will work in SharePoint document library also.

Person column in SharePoint Online List or Library

• In SharePoint Online list or library, a Person or Group column type is used to get a searchable list of people and groups of the organization, that users can choose when adding or editing a list item.
• The Person or Group column can be customized to allow multiple selections, include or exclude groups of people, limit the list to specific users, and specify certain information to display in the SharePoint Online list.

Example:- We have created a list for RENA Technologies, a company based out in the United States of America.

Based on the business scenario, the client wanted to store the RENA Employee’s details list in a SharePoint Online list. We already stored information like Employee ID, but we need to create a column for Employee Name and Employee Department using Person or Group column type in SharePoint Online.

Add a Person column in SharePoint Online List or Library

There are two different ways to create a Peron column in SharePoint Online, they are:

• Create a SharePoint List Person column using Add column.
• Create a SharePoint List Person column using List Settings.

Create a SharePoint List Person column using Add column

Here we will see how to create a SharePoint List Person column using Add column.

• Open the SharePoint List that we want to add the people column type, else Navigate to https://<tenantname>.sharepoint.com/sites/<sitename>/Lists/<Listname> For Example: https://tsinfotechnologies.sharepoint.com/sites/RenaTechnologies/Lists/RENAEmployees
• Click on the Add column -> select Person type

• Click on the Next button.
• In the Create a column board, the following steps appear:
  • Name: Provide the name of the column based on our requirements. For Example, I am creating a column as Employee Name.
  • Description: Provide the purpose of the Column which we create.
  • Type: Choose Person or Group type.
  • Allow selection of groups: These allow to select from members inside the group or not.
  • Show profile photos: We can choose yes to show the profile picture of the person.

• Click on the Save button.

Now we can see the person type column is created as Employee Name into the SharePoint list. Let us add the items to it, and display how it looks.

• Click on the + New button.
• Add the Employee Id and add the Employee name or select the list that appears when we start typing.

• Click on the Save button.

Now we have created the SharePoint Online List Person column using Add column.

Create a SharePoint List Person column using list Settings

Here we will see how to create a SharePoint Online List Person column using List Settings.

• Open the SharePoint List that you have already created, else Navigate to https://<tenantname>.sharepoint.com/sites/<sitename>/Lists/<Listname> For Example: https://tsinfotechnologies.sharepoint.com/sites/RenaTechnologies/Lists/RENAEmployees
• Click on the Settings icon -> Select List settings.

• Then it will display the Settings page, scroll down and click on the create column as shown below:

• In the Create a column page, the following steps appear:
  • Name: Provide the name of the column based on your requirement. For Example, I am creating a column as Employee Department.
  • Type: Choose a Person or Group type
  • Description: Describe the column that you created.
  • Require that this column contains information: Choose Yes, that employee department column contains information.
  • Enforce unique values: (it is disabled by default)Enforce unique values are to set a column to require unique values. You can set the appropriate radio button to enable or disable it.

• Allow multiple selections: Now we can enable multiple selections from a Choice Field Yes/No.
• Allow selection of: We can choose them by:
  • People Only: We can select the people who should have access to the SharePoint Online list.
  • People and Groups: when we select the people and groups column, it will be mentioned for a particular group.
• Choose from: We can limit the selection of choices in a People column by:
  • All Users: We can set users to who you want to limit the People Column.
  • SharePoint groups: This group was already created, where a collection of users who all have the same set of permissions, else when we type a person, who is not part of that group, they will not be able to add them (they will get an error message instead that doesn’t correspond to the given scenario: “Your organization’s policies don’t allow you to share with these users).

• Show field: Displaying the column based on user requirements. For example: when the user is already added and needs to display only their department, phone number, first name, etc. We can choose them and display them. Also, we can make it a Default view.

• Column Formatting: We can change the display of this column by adding JSON below.
  Remove the text from the box to clear the custom formatting.
• Click on the OK button.

Now we can see the person type column is created as Employee Department let us add the items to it, and display how it looks.

• Click on the + New button.
• Add the Employee Id, add the Employee name, or select the list that appears when you start typing, and add the Employee name in the Employee Department where it displays the department of their organization.

• Click on the Save button.

Now we can see the created SharePoint Online List Person column using List Settings.

SharePoint list person field default value

By default, SharePoint does not allow us to set a default value to a person field in list or library, but we can use Power Apps to set a default value to a person column in SharePoint list.

Conclusion

In this SharePoint Online Tutorial, we learned all about the Person column in SharePoint Online list or library. Also, we saw, how to create a Person column in SharePoint Online list, and what are the different ways to create a Person column in SharePoint Online, and also the SharePoint list person field default value.

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