Changing type of a custom field for already created site collections

**Santiago** · Aug 9 '10, 02:39 PM

Hi,

Currently we have a series of SharePoint sites already created in which we have a custom field created as follows in a custom fldtypes.xml

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
 <FieldTypes>
 <FieldType>
  <Field Name="TypeName">HierarchyTaggingField</Field>
  <Field Name="TypeDisplayName">Hierarchy Tagging Field</Field>
  <Field Name="TypeShortDescription">Accenture Help Custom Field for Tagging Hierarchy (using other lookups).</Field>
  <Field Name="ParentType">Text</Field>
  <Field Name="Filterable">TRUE</Field>
  <Field Name="FieldTypeClass">Help.Fields.HierarchyTaggingField, Help.Fields, Version=1.0.0.2, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=e3f48f81099596cd</Field>
  <!--Field Name="FieldEditorUserControl">/_controltemplates/LookupFieldEditor.ascx</Field-->
  <!--Field Name="FieldEditorUserControl">/_controltemplates/Help/HelpFilterFieldTypeControl.ascx</Field-->
  <RenderPattern Name="DisplayPattern">
  <HTML><![CDATA[<span class="h1-HierarchyTaggingFieldControl" style="display:none;">]]></HTML>
  <LookupColumn HTMLEncode="TRUE" />
  <HTML><![CDATA[</span> ]]></HTML>
  </RenderPattern>
  <RenderPattern Name="EditPattern">
  <HTML><![CDATA[ ]]></HTML>
  <LookupColumn HTMLEncode="TRUE" />
  <HTML><![CDATA[ ]]></HTML>
  </RenderPattern>
 </FieldType>
 </FieldTypes>

Now we need to change the ParentType to "Note" and add the SQLType field and set it to "ntext". We did these changes to the xml and (of course) the change is working perfectly on new sites but for already created sites we are not being able to make this change work.

If anyone knows a way of making this change work properly it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Santiago