SharePoint Designer Custom Forms for SharePoint On Premise 2019

Question

SharePoint Designer Custom Forms for SharePoint On Premise 2019

Fortner, Thomas 1

We currently have a SharePoint 2019 On Premise Installation that has some custom list forms using SharePoint Designer, last night I found that I am no longer able to create any new forms or edit the existing forms using SharePoint designer 2013. My understanding from this support link is that Designer was turned off for SharePoint online, but from what I understand On Premise should be "supported" until 2026. I can find no documentation stating that this feature was turned off for On Premise during a patch. Can anyone confirm that this happened? Or can someone point me in the direction of a way to access my existing forms without breaking them (when I attempted to edit a form it completely broke it and I had to use ShareGate to copy the custom form back from our dev server).

Ron G 21 Reputation points

2020-11-27T19:57:46.287+00:00

This is also happening to us in our DoD site. We migrated over to SharePoint 2016 from SharePoint 2013 in June/July. We started to get the error "Could not save list changes to the server" a couple of months ago. The puzzling thing is, we can create custom forms in some sites within a site collection but not in all its sites. Another thing is one day I could create custom forms in a list in a site but not at the top-level site. A couple days later, I could create a custom form in the top-level site, but not all of its subsites. I keep telling the help desk that there is no documentation that I can find which states that Microsoft has deprecated this feature in SharePoint 2016 On-Premise.

Am I wrong in assuming that Microsoft has NOT deprecated this feature in SharePoint 2016 On-Premise?

6 answers

Your answer

Ron G 21 Reputation points

2020-11-27T19:57:46.287+00:00

This is also happening to us in our DoD site. We migrated over to SharePoint 2016 from SharePoint 2013 in June/July. We started to get the error "Could not save list changes to the server" a couple of months ago. The puzzling thing is, we can create custom forms in some sites within a site collection but not in all its sites. Another thing is one day I could create custom forms in a list in a site but not at the top-level site. A couple days later, I could create a custom form in the top-level site, but not all of its subsites. I keep telling the help desk that there is no documentation that I can find which states that Microsoft has deprecated this feature in SharePoint 2016 On-Premise.

Am I wrong in assuming that Microsoft has NOT deprecated this feature in SharePoint 2016 On-Premise?

Answer 1

Sharath Kumar Aluri 3,071

You're correct SharePoint Designer 2013 will work with SharePoint Server 2019 for the remainder of the client support lifecycle (2026). SharePoint Designer 2013 will not be supported beyond that timeframe. So, that should cause your problem. what is the recent patch you did on your SharePoint 2019 Farm ? I didn't see any issue on my SharePoint 2019 farm all forms are working as expected.

Thanks & Regards,

Fortner, Thomas 1 Reputation point

2020-11-13T15:29:36.033+00:00

I am not sure which patch may have caused it. I know that I tried to log on through our VPN connection, and then I logged directly on to the web app server, installed SP Designer and attempted to make new forms / edit forms. I would receive the "Could not save list changes to the server" error, and the "unable to connect to site" error when attempting to update any form using SP Designer. Our Server Admin would have applied all patches up to October 2020, but I have not attempted to update a form since before March this year.
trevorseward 11,711 Reputation points

2021-03-22T18:45:52.79+00:00

Installing any Office product on a SharePoint Server puts it into a non-supported state. You would need to replace the SharePoint Server as uninstalling Office products isn't a clean operation.

Answer 2

Sharath Kumar Aluri 3,071

I don't think it's a patch issue, first of all you shouldn't be installing SP Designer on SharePoint servers that's not at all a good practice, Install SP Designer on a client machine and download and install below ones. you need to install SP1 as well.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35491

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42015 -SP1

Thanks & Regards,

Fortner, Thomas 1 Reputation point

2020-11-13T15:56:01.42+00:00

It was for testing purposes, and I have removed it since last night. I will look into the service pack for SP Designer, thanks.
Fortner, Thomas 1 Reputation point

2020-11-13T16:20:28.027+00:00

I removed the 64 bit SharePoint designer that was installed. Cleared all temp files and cache, installed 32 bit SharePoint Designer and the Service pack. Rebooted and tried to create a new custom form with the same result.

I appreciate the suggestions you've given so far, and I'm definitely open for more things to try.
Sharath Kumar Aluri 3,071 Reputation points

2020-11-13T16:30:26.74+00:00

SharePoint Designer shares some files of Microsoft Office and therefore needs to match the version of Office you have. If you have Office 32bit, you will install SharePoint Designer 32bit, 64bit Office needs Designer 64bit. After Installing SharePoint Designer 2013 and SP1 try installing the below update for SP Designer as well.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3114721/august-2-2016-update-for-sharepoint-designer-2013-kb3114721

Thanks & Regards,
Fortner, Thomas 1 Reputation point

2020-11-13T20:08:15.227+00:00

I have now tried both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of SP Designer 2013 installed on clean client machines. I can create a list, edit columns, and delete lists, but I cannot get any version to create / edit a custom form. When trying to create a form I get the message I mentioned above, when trying to edit It will save the edit, but sometimes it also breaks the form and then will show a message saying "There are no items to show in this view".

Working
Create list,
edit list columns
delete lists

Not Working
Cant create custom (New, edit, or display) forms

Half working
Can edit existing forms but each time you save it's a crapshoot as to whether or not the form will break once it's saved.

Answer 3

Allen Xu_MSFT 13,861

Hi @Fortner, Thomas ,

Apart from trying the advice given by sharatha, to narrow down your issue, let’s confirm the followings:

Does this issue occur on other lists of the same site collection?
You can create a new custom list in your site collection via UI and test if forms can be created for it in SharePoint Designer.
Can you create a new item normally in your problem list? If you are unable to create an item in the list, please check whether there are broken Lookup column or Calculated columns in your list. Go to delete them and recreate in your list. There is a similar case for you to refer to: https://drewmadelung.com/sharepoint-designer-error-could-not-save-the-list-changes-to-the-server/
Note: Microsoft is providing this information as a convenience to you. The sites are not controlled by Microsoft. Microsoft cannot make any representations regarding the quality, safety, or suitability of any software or information found there. Please make sure that you completely understand the risk before retrieving any suggestions from the above link.
How did you clear the cache? Please refer to this article to clear SharePoint Designer 2013 cache: How to Clear Your SharePoint Designer 2010/2013 Cache
If everything I mentioned above doesn’t work for you, please check whether there are some related error messages in ULS logs.

I hope this information has been useful, please let me know if you still need assistance.

If an Answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
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Fortner, Thomas 1 Reputation point

2020-11-16T19:10:30.273+00:00
As an update to your response:

Yes, it occurs on every list in that site collection which is on our production farm running 2019, and on the same site in our Development (separate) farm running SP2019 as well.

I can create, and delete custom lists using SP Designer - The lists in question have no lookup columns (but I am unable to create custom forms on these lists)

I can create / edit /delete list items created on the list that has custom forms already,

I cleared the SP Designer Cache using the method in the link you included.

We are in the process of investigating the ULS logs and I am also checking all the Central Admin settings on both farms.

It should be noted that SP designer is enabled on both farms using Central Admin, the site collection in questions has a copy on our development environment and a live environment where we copy the database and mount it to our live environment ( the dev copy of the site is about three months old)
Allen Xu_MSFT 13,861 Reputation points

2020-11-17T05:30:17.687+00:00

Thanks for your reply :-)

If you find some related error messages in ULS logs, please share here for further help.
Fortner, Thomas 1 Reputation point

2020-11-18T02:21:44.477+00:00

Found nothing in the ULS logs that looks suspicious so far but I do have a little more to add to the case. Opened up one of our sites on a 2013 Farm and I was able to create / edit custom forms on lists and libraries. Went to another site collection on that same farm and was unable to create the form.

So, now on both 2019 and 2013 SharePoint farms I have mixed results with some site collections being able to generate the custom forms and others that will not allow custom form creation. The only thing I can correlate right now is that the site collection that worked is not extended to any other URL's while the ones that seem to have a problem have an authenticated side for authoring and an anonymous side that is public facing.

We are still trying different things to narrow down what may be causing the issue, but as of now I'm having the same issue on both SP 2019, and SP 2013 site collections on both Windows Server 2019, and Windows Server 2012R2.

Answer 4

Kurt Storsved 1

We are having the exact issue with the same environment and are wondering if this was resolved?

Fortner, Thomas 1 Reputation point

2021-01-28T14:23:40.72+00:00

Unfortunately it has not been fully resolved. What I have learned, however, is with our environment the sites that have the issues are publishing sites that we have extended. For example www.something.com is the main site collection and auth.something.com is the extension. If I connect to the main site collection using designer I am able to edit as expected, if I connect to the authoring extension it has the issue listed above. I'm not sure if that helps in your situation, but it did help me solve the immediate problem I was having. I would still like to know what changed, as in the past it never seemed to matter which of the url's I used.

Answer 5

Hribar, Rok 1

Hello. We are also facing the same issue. Did anyone find a solution yet?

Fortner, Thomas 1 Reputation point

2021-03-22T18:48:45.687+00:00

I never got a solid answer, the only thing I was able to figure out is if I connected to the main site collection I was able to edit the forms, but if I attempted to connect to the extended sharepoint site it would not work.

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SharePoint Designer Custom Forms for SharePoint On Premise 2019

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