Dropdown to change the View disappeared
When you go to a document library or list in Sharepoint 2007, you see a dropdown in which you can select a different view or create a new view if you have the right permissions.
If you ever find yourself thinking “Where did the change the view dropdown go?”
Don’t worry, one of two things could have happened.
- You added a second document library webpart on your page, but this would be obvious because you would see two webparts, one with a dropdown and one without it.
- Your user (or yourself) -closed- the webpart and added it again, leaving the closed webpart on the page, but hidden. This one is harder to detect, because you only see the webpart without the dropdown.
How do you fix this?
In the first case there isn’t much of a problem, you -delete- the second webpart from the page or you leave it on there (but without the dropdown).
For the second case you’ll have to edit the page (Site Actions, Edit Page), press Add a Web Part. At the bottom of the dialog is a link “Advanced Web Part gallery and options“, click it. A side bar “Add Web Parts” appears. Below the “Select the collection you want to browse.” is a link called “Closed Web Parts“, when you click it the Web Part List with closed Web Parts appears. Select the Document Library Web Part and click the “Add” button on the bottom of the screen. The page will show the two Web Parts, -delete- the one without the dropdown and you’re back in business.
Why? A web part which shows a list is supposed to display only one view of the list at a time. But you can definitely change the view by modifying the shared web part properties.
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September 22nd, 2008 at 01:48
[...] Dropdown to change the View disappeared [...]
December 1st, 2008 at 17:39
This problem has happened to us several times. This is a great find and corrected our issue.
February 18th, 2009 at 18:05
Extremely helpful post!
April 14th, 2009 at 21:24
Great solution and awesome explanation.
April 29th, 2009 at 17:59
This was the solution to my issue. Thank you for the very detailed explanation.
June 10th, 2009 at 18:51
but what if you accidentally deleted (not closed) the original webpart?
June 11th, 2009 at 18:47
I was looking for a way to hide the Views control or for permissions to stop users from being able to change the default view. This works great in reverse of the original problem of this post. Thanks
June 22nd, 2009 at 18:18
I have the same situation as Clinteo– the original web part was deleted, not closed, so it can’t be reopened from the Advanced Web Part gallery. Thanks for the help!
June 22nd, 2009 at 21:27
I’m still not clear as to why these dis-appear and if there is a way to track if someone closed it??
June 23rd, 2009 at 14:07
After some digging around in SharePoint Designer and in SharePoint itself, I have a solution for restoring the View dropdown after the out-of-the-box List View Web Part has been deleted. This solution can be accomplished without SharePoint Designer if you are working with a library, but to clean out the views from a list, you will need SharePoint Designer. I am doing this in MOSS 2007 SP1, but it should work for WSS 3.0 as well.
For this example, I am using a document library called Public Documents and my View is allitems.aspx, but this should work for any list or library.
Here are the steps for bringing back the View dropdown:
1. Navigate to the list or library that is missing the View dropdown
2. Go to Site Actions > Edit Page > Add a Web Part . In the Lists and Libraries section, check the box next to the Public Documents library and click the Add button.
3. Within the new Web Part, go to edit > Modify Shared Web Part and change the Toolbar Type to “Full Toolbar”. Click the OK button.
4. Click the link to Exit Edit Mode and you should have the Full Toolbar for the list/library displayed, but it is still missing the View dropdown menu.
5. Go to Settings > Create View .
6. Choose Standard View .
7. Name the view, check the “Make this the default view” box, select the columns to include, and click the OK button.
8. Voila, the View dropdown menu is back on the site.
9. To completely clean it up, for a list, open in SharePoint Designer and delete the allitems.aspx view from the Forms folder. For a library, you can go to the Actions menu and select Open with Windows Explorer . Open the Forms folder (you may need to show hidden files to see this folder) and delete the allitems.aspx view. If you do not have access to SharePoint Designer and you are working in a list, you will need to delete the link on the Quick Launch and add again to point to your new view name.
10. If the View you deleted was the default for the list or library, it may remove the link from the Quick Launch. It can be added again by going to View All Site Content , selecting the appropriate list or library, going into its Settings menu, and modifying the Title, description and navigation settings to show on the Quick Launch.
July 26th, 2009 at 12:49
Thanks man! Helped us a lot!!!
August 12th, 2009 at 00:41
Thanks for saving me alot of time!!! Great write-up!
August 17th, 2009 at 19:11
This was a big help. Thanks for taking the time to post.
August 20th, 2009 at 10:56
Hey the problem still exist for me. I am adding a new list view webpart which was not added, closed or deleted before. I still dont see the view dropdown. And i am not using sharepoint designer.
Hope to get some help
- bhargavi
August 28th, 2009 at 21:53
Back in business! Started to pull my hair out before stumbling onto this. Thanks!!!
September 10th, 2009 at 13:19
Thank you! You saved me!
October 5th, 2009 at 01:44
Thank you so much! This was driving me crazy. No one has had training on SP at my company so I am self taught. Thanks again.
October 5th, 2009 at 16:06
Excellent post!
November 9th, 2009 at 14:10
Thanks, as this is day one of our Upgrade, you made it easy to put-out at least one fire.
November 16th, 2009 at 16:55
This solutions is excellent. Well done
November 20th, 2009 at 11:02
Thank you very much! You saved my life today!
December 1st, 2009 at 13:47
Thanks a lot,,it worked just fine.
January 15th, 2010 at 21:04
This is great… saved me a couple hours of troubleshooting a user error… ARGH!!!
)
January 15th, 2010 at 21:38
You the man!
January 15th, 2010 at 22:01
One other thing I learned that might help others: after I followed the City of Champions advice, my quick launch was still linking to a “corrupted” view. I went into site settings and created a new quick launch with a link to the correct new view. Then I deleted the bad quick link. – Works great!
February 3rd, 2010 at 23:12
Great article. Fixed my problem to the T!
February 11th, 2010 at 19:04
Great article. Thank you very much! You saved my life today!
February 15th, 2010 at 21:20
Thank you very much, saved my evening…
February 19th, 2010 at 21:36
Thanks! That fixed my issue.
April 8th, 2010 at 10:44
Thanks for sharing, it’s one of those thngs that I knew but had forgotten. No doubt I’ll be back again in 12 months trying to find it again
)
April 9th, 2010 at 17:19
I found that even after deleting the hidden web part, the view drop down still wouldn’t appear. but here is the trick I got: go to doc library settings | views, create a new view based on “All Documents”, take all the default, and click on OK button, the magic comes.! (if there is a duplicate web part of the same content, it will show up as well, then you can properly delete it)
April 30th, 2010 at 06:24
Great article. Really helpful.
May 12th, 2010 at 10:56
Thank you very useful post!
June 7th, 2010 at 12:42
You made my day, man!
June 22nd, 2010 at 21:22
I was freaking out due to this issue, thank you for posting such helpful information to your website.
July 14th, 2010 at 20:58
I am really happy I have found your website. I felt the same as Wes. Thank you very much.
August 2nd, 2010 at 15:14
Thank you! That resolved my issue!
August 12th, 2010 at 14:22
Thanks, Erwin. I was struggling with this one.
August 17th, 2010 at 10:21
Thank you ! Well written article and saved me tearing any more hair out
August 24th, 2010 at 13:47
Thank you!
Saved me a lot of valuable time! Most helpful!
August 25th, 2010 at 19:31
Thank you! I’m glad I only spent 15 minutes trying to figure this out on my own before seeking help.
September 1st, 2010 at 22:34
Beautiful! Excellent walkthrough! Great find! I would have never figured this out. Many thanks!
September 21st, 2010 at 09:57
Great, thanks. Worked like a charm.
September 24th, 2010 at 18:31
Fantastic.
October 7th, 2010 at 21:43
Thanks much! This helped us out!
November 16th, 2010 at 22:24
awesome!
November 25th, 2010 at 05:48
Thanks so much!!!! Will definitely save for the future….
January 14th, 2011 at 21:34
What if you are adding the calendar web part to a newly created web part page? This is the dielma I am facing! I can see the drop down for the view no problem on the actual calendar.aspx page. I don’t see it when I add the calendar web page to a web part page.
January 28th, 2011 at 18:58
This really helped! Thanks a ton!
January 31st, 2011 at 23:01
Thanks.
I spent several hours with this problem.
Answer not intuitive.
When I recreated the “problem” on a second list, I suspected there needed to be a solution.
February 8th, 2011 at 13:06
This was fantastic, saved me a lot of time and frustration
February 10th, 2011 at 13:42
Spot on, saved me time. I love the site.
February 21st, 2011 at 00:53
Many thanks for the detailed resolution! A great post!
March 1st, 2011 at 11:09
Nice one!!
March 2nd, 2011 at 15:29
Perfect quick solution – thank you!!!
March 8th, 2011 at 14:26
Similar problem in SharePoint 2010 and a free tool to fix it
http://blog.pentalogic.net/2011/03/disappearing-view-selector-menu-sharepoint-2010/#more-1997
March 13th, 2011 at 20:08
Thank you so much for this. I was scratching my head for hours trying to work out where my Task List went when I clicked on the x button while in edit mode.
March 17th, 2011 at 12:21
absolute bloody hero. thank you!
March 24th, 2011 at 12:52
Thanks for the great help!
May 18th, 2011 at 14:19
Great Help!!! Thanks…
May 18th, 2011 at 16:02
Great help, my problem has been solved. Thanks.
May 31st, 2011 at 17:18
Thank you so much for posting this article. This definitely helped when I lost my View menu. Thanks again!!
June 1st, 2011 at 19:43
Brilliant – it took me way too long to find this article.
June 7th, 2011 at 01:43
I wish I had come to this page much earlier. It would have saved me about 3 hours and a great deal of frustration! Thanks for the post!!
June 28th, 2011 at 19:04
City of Champions FTW!!
July 27th, 2011 at 23:55
Wow. Thanks!
August 4th, 2011 at 02:49
Thanks for this! My boss now thinks I am a guru when it comes to sharepoint use – promise I have shared this site with him
August 4th, 2011 at 08:40
Thank U very much
It helped me to deny some users to change views
Many Thanks
September 26th, 2011 at 13:46
Thanks for the article. It really helped me!
October 4th, 2011 at 22:34
This saved me today — thanks!
October 19th, 2011 at 11:16
Thanks!
October 19th, 2011 at 14:36
Hi Erwin, I wish I’d found your website a year ago.
The above instructions were absolutely perfect and resolved an issue I had spent over several hours or more trying to fix for somoene. Much appreciated!
October 19th, 2011 at 14:37
Hi Erwin, I wish I’d found your website a year ago.
The above instructions were absolutely perfect and resolved in minutes what I had spent several hours trying, to fix for someone. Much appreciated!
October 28th, 2011 at 15:07
Perfect directions – fixed in 2 minutes!
Thanks!
November 3rd, 2011 at 09:26
It’s awesome and perfectly helpful!!!
December 7th, 2011 at 06:37
Lifesaver. Thanks!
December 13th, 2011 at 14:49
Just took me three links to get all the way over here. Thanks again for the straightforward and clear instructions!
January 4th, 2012 at 09:16
Great stuff. spot on…
January 18th, 2012 at 19:03
Thanks so much!! You really saved the day with this one. I had a user delete a folder, restore it and the view menu was missing. I spent more time than I’d like to admin looking into this issue and your easy instructions fixed our issue instantly. Thanks again for the very helpful site.
January 31st, 2012 at 15:47
Thanks for the help.