Long list of choices... How can I divide them on a Form - then combine the answers.

[Catharine]

I have a SharePoint Multi-select Choice field which has about 30 options.  The options fall into 3 categories A, B, C.

For ease of use I would like to have 3 different (colour coded) choice lists displayed on the form and then combine the results to write back to the single SharePoint field.

I have created the 3 "not connected" choice fields for the user to be able to find the appropriate choices easily, but I don't know how to combine the results, and write them back to the single SharePoint field.

(I think... but not certain, that this will be complicated by a couple of the options having commas in them.)

Eg. Option 1 = "Fred", Option 2 = "George", Option3="Helen, Ann", Option 5="1357",

Option 6 = "78, 965A"

Can anyone point me in the correct direction.

Thank you

[emha]

you could combine them with calculated value control, and connect the calculated value control to a list fieled.

but that would be just a text field not a choice field anymore.

could you maybe explain a bit of backgound? maybe there is possible a different design.

can the user select an option regardless of category? or just from single catagory?

why you need them to save together to a single field and not to seprate fields - one for each category?

[Catharine]

I was trying to make the list easier to negociate.

There are 30+ options and it is much easier to think I am looking for category A and select something from that category (maybe 10 options) rather than hunt through the 30 options.  The user can select any combination of the options

I am wanting them all in one field in SharePoint - because all the options trigger the same things to happen, and once entered they should all be treated in the same way.  One option MUST be selected but it doesn't matter which category it is from.

I am more experienced in workflows (this is only my 3rd form) - so I have created the calculated field and written it to a list field in SharePoint and then updated my workflow to manipulate the values and store them into the choice field.

I was hoping to be able to do more manipulation within the form.  At the moment I am obviously not clear on the functions available.

[emha · Accepted solution]

unfortunatelly there is not such a functionality that would split single options by a category or any other criteria.

only possibility that comes to my mind is to play a bit with arangement options - in which direction options are rendered first and in how many columns they are distributed. one column might mean one category.

but that means that you needed equal nuber of options per category and they would need to be sorted in a way so that they are distributed 'by categories'

[Catharine]

Thank you for confirming that I hadn't missed something. 

Unfortunately although in my example I had 3 lots of 10 - in actual fact there are not the same number of items in each category, and as the user adds items (which at the moment, as we are in development, is quite frequently), the numbers are constantly changing so the organise using the columns would probably not work for long.

I will stick with my form + workflow approach although it is a bit clunky.

[Jekaterina]

I'm not sure if I fully understood the purpose of using the choice fields when you say that the values are updated by the users frequently...
Also, adding new values or updating existing values in your 'final' choice field in SharePoint will require site owner permissions (unless fill in option is enabled) + re-publishing the form after updating the values of disconnected controls in the form accordingly.

I had similar requirements in the past and I used lookups instead of choices. The source list was configured with additional field (category) and had several filtered views filtered.
In the form, the lookup columns were configured with specific source view to display filtered values.

PS. If your controls are not connected, you still can retrieve the values in the workflow by using 'Query XML' action to fetch FormData... Just name your controls, otherwise you will have to address then by GUIDs.